On 20 December last year, the National Theatre finally reopened after a fire destroyed it six years earlier. The fire broke out mysteriously at that historical building on Saturday, 27 September, 2008, only 3 days before the end of Ramadan, and just a few minutes before sunset, when Muslims were preparing to break their fast, that is, at the deadliest time of the day, when Cairo becomes like a ghost city. Though a fire station exists a few hundred yards away, facing the theatre across Ataba square, and there was hardly any traffic at all at that time of day, it took over three hours to put the fire out. In those three hours, the fire had all but totally consumed the inside of that old, beautiful theatre, destroying the whole stage, the curtain, the tiring rooms, the scenery and costumes storerooms, most of the auditorium and part of the quaint oriental dome that tops the building. It was an awesome sight which sent many of the artists who rushed to the scene into hysterical weeping and left everyone who watched it, even those who had never set foot inside the building, in a state of deep shock and sorrow. It was like watching your most cherished memories, the best part of your life, of your history – the last relic of that once elegant and beautiful part of Cairo – wantonly and viciously destroyed. As I watched the horrible flames, I remembered the old Opera House which burnt down in 1969 (to be replaced by an ugly, multistory car park – a veritable eyesore and architectural monstrosity), the graceful arcades facing the National Theatre with their old, historically famous cafes, like Café Matatia (which were ruthlessly pulled down in subsequent years to make room for an unsightly flyover), and the enchanting Azbakiyya garden of my early childhood (once a lovely park, now a virtual rubbish dump). I also remembered the fire that ripped through a crowded passenger train of eleven carriages, travelling from Cairo to Luxor at Al-Ayyat on 20 February 2002, burning three hundred and fifty passengers alive in the deadliest disaster in more than 150 years of Egyptian rail history; the Beni Suef cultural palace inferno that killed more than 60 theatre artists and audiences on 5 September 2005; the burning of the Shura Council (the upper chamber of the Egyptian parliament) the previous month, precisely on 19 August 2008. Mercifully, the National Theatre was deserted when the fire broke out and the building itself, though extensively damaged, had miraculously survived; and for that one was infinitely thankful in spite of everything. But this was not the case in the many fires that followed. Indeed, in retrospect, one cannot help regarding the National Theatre fire symbolically, not only as an inevitable culmination of a series of national disasters, but also as a portent of the grand conflagration that took place two and a half years later on 25 January, 2011. During the 25 January Revolution fire seemed to rip through Egypt: upward of ninety police stations were set ablaze, along with the headquarters of Mubarak's National Democratic Party and many official buildings. Ten months later, on 17 December 2011, when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was in power, the Institut d'Egypte (Egypt's Academy of Science, founded by Napoleon in 1798) was torched and thousands of priceless and irreplaceable manuscripts and books were destroyed. More fires followed the toppling of ex-president Mohamed Morsi and the forced dispersal of his supporters' sit-ins in Rabaa and Nahda Squares in Cairo on 14 August 2013. The Faculty of Engineering of Cairo University was set ablaze, and so were Rabaa Mosque, the Arab Contractors' building in central Cairo, with its three-storey blood bank, many Christian and Coptic schools and no less than seventy churches in Cairo, Giza, Fayoum, Assiut, Menya, Sohag, Suez, Arish and Luxor. Indeed, in respect of the numbers of fires they boasted, the last 13 years seem unparalleled in modern Egyptian history. With such a blazing record, is it any wonder that the restoration and renovation of the National Theatre took six years to accomplish? Finally, however, it was declared completed and the theatre was officially reopened on 20 December 2014. The opening took place amid heated controversy over some technical and architectural aspects of the restoration work, particularly the construction of a new, modern-style glass façade for the administrative building adjacent to the theatre, which in the view of many horribly clashed with the original Islamic style of the historical building. There were also complaints about defects in the fire-fighting system and the restoration costs which had spiraled from an original estimate of LE55 to LE105 million. To dampen the occasion further, the production that was to grace the opening – a musical documentary about the life of enlightenment pioneer Rifaa Al-Tahtawi, based on two plays by Nomaan Ashour and directed by Essam Al-Sayed – was not yet ready and a Tanoura dance show was presented instead, together with many speeches. Much as I missed that beloved haunt that had been a cherished part of my life for over forty years, I stayed away from the opening. I was frightened off by press reports and photos of the renovated building. And even when Bahlam Ya Masr (I am Dreaming, Egypt), the documentary that had been intended for the opening ceremony, finally premiered nine days later (on 29 December), and though it featured Ali Al-Haggar, one of my favourite singers, in the lead as Al-Tahtawi, I still kept away. It was not until the end of February 2015, when the play was about to end its run, that I finally mustered enough courage to revisit the National Theatre. On sight of that awful glass façade I broke down in tears. It was an ominous sign, for within days, in early March, the theatre was closed again by orders of the Ministry of Interior pending the installation of a security zone, fenced in with iron railings and gates, round the theatre. Between December, 2014 and March, 2015, there were plans to reorganise the management of the National Theatre on new lines. Minister of culture then, Gaber Asfour, thought up a project to dissociate the National Theatre, both financially and administratively, from the inefficient, bloated and bureaucracy-ridden State Theatre Organisation and establish it as an independent institution with a separate budget and a prestigious board of trustees to design its policies, define its targets and supervise its running. This encouraged veteran director Samir Al-Asfouri to take the initiative and draw up a detailed, ambitious plan to make the National Theatre into not only an active guardian of the theatrical heritage of Egypt, regularly showcasing its best products, but also an incubator and promoter of new talent by incorporating into its work a subsidiary programme of workshops and productions of new plays by young directors with young actors. Al-Asfouri submitted his plan to Minister Asfour who, in turn, appointed a board of trustees for the National Theatre. The board met a few times, but before they could thoroughly discuss any plans, Al-Asfouri's or otherwise, let alone endorse them, Gaber Asfour, who had incurred the displeasure of the religious establishment, was dismissed from office and the project fizzled out. Without officially disbanding the National's appointed board of trustees, some members of which had actually resigned during Asfour's term due to internal disputes over polices and clashes of views and personalities, the next minister of culture, Abdel Wahid Al-Nabawi, virtually put an end to Asfour's project, restoring the National to its former status as a branch of the State Theatre Organisation. When the National Theatre reopened on 13 August, 2015, Abdel Wahid Al-Nabawi was there at the head of an official delegation while the board of trustees was nowhere to be seen. Within six weeks, however, he was replaced by yet another minister of culture, the twelfth in less than five years, and still no sign of that ill-fated board. Whether its members had a say in the choice of play for this second reopening is doubtful. It was probably the head of the State Theatre, together with the new artistic director of the National Theatre, Yusef Ismael, who chose to mark the occasion with a revival of Leila min Alf Leila (A Night of the Thousand Nights), an old operetta that draws on the settings, characters and atmosphere of its namesake and has been in the repertoire of the Egyptian theatre since 1931. This charming operetta, for which Beiram El-Tonsi (1893-1961) wrote the libretto and Ahmed Sidqi (1916-1987) the musical score, was first performed in 1931 at the old Opera house (destroyed by fire in 1971); it was subsequently revived at the National Theatre in 1958, at Mohamed Farid Theatre (now defunct) in 1972, and at Al-Gumhouriya theatre in 1994, with the inimitable, irresistibly charismatic Yehia Al-Fakharani in the lead. Al-Fakharani also stars in the National Theatre's new production of this operetta, taking the lead as Shehata, the wily beggar who wreaks vengeance on his foes, but this time under the direction of Mohsen Hilmi, and heading a fine cast that includes professional singers Heba Magdi and Mohamed Mohsen, as the charming, handsome, romantic couple, brilliant comedian Lotfy Labib, as the daredevil brigand Gawan who snatches Shehata's wife, becoming his main foe and the target of his revenge, Diaa Abdel-Khaliq, as the suave, sophisticated, dangerous vizier, and Salma Gharib, as his jealous, frustrated wife. But notwithstanding Al-Fakharani's superb performance and the excellent cast, the show has some serious flaws. As I mentioned when I reviewed it earlier this year, “Mohamed Al-Gharabawi's huge, extravagantly decorative, heavily detailed and excessively ornate sets were a burden on the eye and seemed designed to distract it away from the performers”; “Sidqi's musical score, interpreted and orchestrated by Mohamed Al-Mogi for this production, was not played and sung live”; and the choreography, by Farouq and Mohamed, was not only “uninspired, tediously conventional and rather haphazard,” but also thoroughly redundant (see ‘Back in action', Al-Ahram Weekly, Issue No.1261, 3 September, 2015). However, the National Theatre's Leila min Alf Leila has been running nonstop to full houses since August, proving a record box-office hit, with a phenomenal two million Egyptian pounds in ticket sales so far. This has led many to regard the second reopening of the National Theatre on 13 August as the most significant theatrical event in 2015 and to vote Leila min Alf Leila as the National Theatre's most successful production ever and the most successful production of the year. What does this say for Gaber Asfour's project and his board of trustees? Are they better out of the way? Should the National Theatre be left to run on the same old, rusty rails if they can lead to such ends? Or was the success of Leila min Alf Leila just a fluke that can hardly be repeated? What of the future? One hears talk of a musical version of Saad Al-Din Wahba's 1960s' Beer El-Sellem (The Stairwell) by veteran director Samir Al-Asfouri for the next production. How will this fare with the public? And does this mean that henceforth the National Theatre will specialise in old musicals or old plays made into musicals? I suppose one will have to wait and see. Meanwhile, one hopes that the fiendish glow of those flames back in 2008 will fade from one's memory.
