Nehad Selaiha watches Ibsen's Peer Gynt transplanted into Egyptian soil Last year a specially adapted version of Peer Gynt was performed with Edvard Grieg's incidental music on the Giza plateau, in front of the Sphinx, as part of the celebrations of the centenary of Ibsen's death. It was the first time an Egyptian audience got to see a live staging of this great dramatic poem. But though the production was supposed to be a cooperative project between Egyptian and Norwegian artists, the Egyptian contribution was limited to the musical side and consisted solely in supplying musicians and choruses: rather than an Egyptian conductor, the Cairo Symphony Orchestra played under the baton of the Norwegian Christian Eggen, and instead of using Egyptian lead singers, the Cairo Opera Acapella choir was led by soloists from the Norwegian National Opera. Not only were the dramaturge, director, choreographer, and set, lighting, costumes and masks designers Norwegian, but so were all the actors, barring Mohamed Wafiq Ali Hilmi who spoke the words of the Sphinx/Boyg in Arabic, and the whole artistic and technical crew as well. Naturally the performance was in Norwegian, with English subtitles which only the dignitaries in the first row could read (see my review in issue 818, 1.11.2006 of the Weekly ), and given the nature of the event, with queen Sonja of Norway and Mrs. Mubarak leading the throng, the audience was predictably quite exclusive, sporting hordes of Norwegian tourists and foreigners living in Egypt. For the ordinary Egyptian theatregoer, it was as if it had never happened. Such a thoroughly Norwegian ' Peer Gent in Giza', as this production was billed at the time, cannot qualify as an Egyptian premiere of the play; to the few lucky locals who got to see it, it was more like a visiting show from abroad. This is what makes Mohsen Hilmi's production of Peer Gynt, which opened three months ago under the title Fi Yom, Fi Shahr,... Sab'a (In a Day, a Month, ... or Seven -- with the rest of the sentence, 'I will return', omitted), the real Egyptian premiere of this great masterpiece, and one quite worthy of it. It ran through the summer in Alexandria, drawing huge audiences, then moved to the Balloon theatre in Cairo in early November, winding up temporarily last week for a short respite before resuming after the Greater Bairam. Here everything is thoroughly local and I think it would be quite exhilarating for Norwegians to see what an Egyptian Peer looks like and how easily and smoothly the character slips into his new identity. For years, director Mohsen Hilmi had dreamt of bringing Peer to the stage. It is the kind of play that completely fits his temperament, style and ideological predilections. Popular theatre is his fort, but a popular theatre with a difference. Throughout his career, which spans close on thirty years, Hilmi has striven to tackle serious political and existential issues through enchanting popular spectacles that draw ingeniously, and quite refreshingly, on folklore and indigenous theatrical traditions, as well as on world literature and the classics of Arabic drama. His productions of Mahfouz Abdel Rahman's Arees li Bint Al-Sultan (A Bridegroom for the Sultan's Daughter), Saadallah Wannus's Rihlat Hanzala (Hanzala's Journey), Mohamed El-Fiel's Daqit Zar (The Zar Beat), and Brecht's The Three Penny Opera, which he reset in Alexandria between the Wars, are enduring masterpieces to which we can safely add this recent production of Peer. To cast the play in the form of a musical may not seem such an original idea; others have done it, though not in Egypt or anywhere in the Arab world, not to mention that the text itself seems to call for such treatment. But rather than an ordinary musical in the western style, Hilmi conceived of a work that would draw on the old tradition of the local Sira (saga/epic) singers by using an orchestra solely composed of folk musicians, in their traditional dress of galabiyas, dark abayas (cloaks) and white turbans, and with their traditional string, wind and percussion instruments -- the rababa (single-stringed fiddle with a bow), the kawala (short cane pipe), the orghul (long double-pipe), the mizmar (single pipe), the naay (reed flute), the darabukka (small drum), the duff (tambourine), and the sagat (brass castanets). Furthermore, this orchestra, together with a folk choir, also traditionally dressed, would sit at the back throughout, in full view of the audience, while accompanying the soloists. There would be no narration though, except what is sung by the characters themselves, but the music, while observing the rules of operatic composition, would vividly draw on old popular tunes, nursery rhymes, country ditties and such folkloric musical forms as the mawwal and the madeeh (religious chants in praise of God or the Prophet). Composer Mohamed Baher, who also conducted this highly original orchestra, completely entered into the spirit of Hilmi's conception and produced a memorable score, studiedly varied, emotionally stirring and highly dramatic. At no point in the performance were the bits of boldly painted scenery which descended from the flies, or were pushed from the sides to indicate a change of location, allowed to hide the orchestra at the back or obscure the openly theatrical, unashamedly fabricated nature of the proceedings which, like the performances of the Sira bards, sought to tell a story rather than create an illusion. Instead of painted backcloths, the stage designer used ornate borders to frame the stage and throw the orchestra and performers into relief. Apart from these vividly coloured fringes, reserved for such exotic scenes as Peer's descent into the kingdom of the jinn (the court of the Dovre King in the original), or his meeting with the whirling dervishes (which replaces his being hailed as the Prophet by the Bedouins of Morocco in the text), Mohamed Hashim's sets were sparse and quite simple: a small, striped tent for Peer's scene with Anitra, a few bars for the mad house scene, a few chairs, beach umbrellas and the side of a yacht for the encounter with the thieving travelers on the coast, a small, ramshackle cottage for his scenes with Aasa, and a tiny mound with two palm trees on top for his wandering in the hills and woods (here fields) near home. This meant that whatever the setting, the vast stage of the Balloon theatre was left blissfully uncluttered and the singers and dancers had plenty of space in which to move. Such a simple design, however, could not have worked so well without Abu Bakr El-Sheriff's effective lighting design which indicated shifts in mood and emotional texture quite unobtrusively. As the curtain opens and the orchestra starts playing the overture, and long before Aasa (here called Fathiyya) and Peer (Bahi) make their entrance, one look at the stage is enough to shape your horizon of expectations, tell you that you are here in a different Peer's land and that Egypt has finally claimed Ibsen's hero as her own. As the magnificent tenor Ahmed Ibrahim walks in as Peer, followed by the equally experienced and forceful contralto Leila Gamal, Peer's situation and subsequent adventures acquire a 'local habitation' and become the nearest thing to a parable about the millions of Egyptian young men who reside in the impoverished, neglected countryside and dream of a better future in the big cities at home or abroad. Sa'id Haggag's adaptation and Sa'id El-Faramawi's lyrics captured the spirit of the moment in Egypt today. In their hands, the story of Ibsen's Peer became the story of every Egyptian young man who emigrates to the big cities, to Cairo, Alexandria, or farther afield, in search of opportunity and a future, leaving behind helpless, long-suffering mothers and faithful, beloved sweethearts, in the hope of returning one day, in a month, a year, or seven, with enough riches to make up to them for their long deprivation. But what if such a traveller never comes back, is swallowed by the waves, like the scores of young Egyptians who recently drowned while trying to reach Italy, or, like the few fortunate ones among them, returns broken and empty handed? Like Peer, many Egyptian young people leave home and end up in the desert, in the oil-rich countries (the equivalent of Ibsen's Morocco) where they lose their identity and become the slaves of carnal appetites, or, in the course of the journey, are forced by circumstances or necessity to masquerade as religious leaders, tricking the innocent and ignorant (as Peer does when he poses as the Prophet), or are tempted to take part in immoral dealings, such as arms, slave trafficking, or worse, and end up in a literal or figurative mad cell as Peer at one point does. To say that some important episodes, like the encounters with the Boyg, the statue of Memnon, the Sphinx, or the Button Moulder at the end, some interesting marginal characters, and much of the poetry of Ibsen's original text have been lost in this Egyptian adaptation is true; but it is equally true that the central questions posited by the text -- about the difference between lying and having a fertile, creative imagination, about the real definition of a sinner, about the road to self-definition and salvation and whether it lies in a straight or roundabout path, whether it resides in 'knowing' oneself, or being 'sufficient' unto it -- as well as much of its significant imagery have been saved, albeit in an altered form and different phrasing. Those familiar with Ibsen's text would find its basic substance here and most of its central themes; it is possible that this new adaptation too would lead them to reflect on what happens to texts when they migrate to another culture and another time and what survives of them in the process and remains relevant. Hopefully, they would applaud the adaptor's replacement of the Norwegian trolls with the more indigenously familiar jinn and would understand why Peer's posing as the Prophet, which would have offended the audience and damned the show, had to be excised and replaced with a dervishes dance announcing his mock transformation into a sheikh in a typical moulid (saint's day) celebration. But the Balloon theatre is a popular venue and its audiences cannot be expected to know anything about Ibsen, his Peer or trolls. Nevertheless, judging by the two nights I was there, they seemed to passionately connect to the show and enjoy it enormously. And no wonder. With such amazingly gifted singers/actors as Ahmed Ibrahim (as Peer), Leila Gamal (his mother). and Naira Aref (as Solveig), such a riveting orchestral accompaniment and such vivid choreographic sequences as provided by Hassan Ibrahim and his young and zestful troupe of dancers, no one watching Hilmi's imaginative venture could come out unbranded by Peer's fire.
