Nehad Selaiha is perturbed by the uncritical staging of an old folk narrative at Al-Ghad Theatre Folk narratives have an irresistible charm. As a child, I used to spend hours by the enormous brown radio in the hall of our flat in Shubra listening in rapt absorption to serialised dramatisations of such epics as Ayyoub Al-Masri (Job, the Egyptian), Saad Al-Yatim (Saad, the Orphan), Khadra Al-Sharifa (Khadra, the Honourable), Ibn Arous, Mala'eeb Shiha (Shiha's Ploys), and Kayd Al-Nisaa' (Wicked Feminine Intrigues). In all of them dialogue alternated with chanted narration by a chorus of women, sometimes with a lead folk singer -- Khadra Mohamed Khidr, Fatma Sarhan or Gamalat Shiha -- who invariably started off with praises of Prophet Mohamed and repeatedly pinpointed the moral of the tale. The character that intrigued me most was Na'saa, the beautiful, long-suffering, patient wife of Ayyoub Al-Masri who stands by him in his long illness, remaining loyal throughout, despite many temptations, and sacrificing everything, including her long, thick braids which she barters for bread. The part was played by Nigma Ibrahim, an actress who only a few years earlier had risen to fame when she impersonated a ruthless, brutal serial killer in a film version of the real story of the two sisters, Rayya and Sakina, who terrorised Alexandria in the 1920s with a series of mysterious crimes in which the victims, all richly bejeweled females, seemed to completely disappear until their bodies were fortuitously discovered under the floor of the basement of the sisters' home which, ironically, stood next door to Al-Labban police station. Ibrahim had made such a vivid impression as the killer on the screen, had been so sinister and terrifying that hard as I tried, I could not imagine her as the sweet, tender Na'saa. Every time she spoke, her voice evoked the image of the terrible Rayya who had given me many a nightmare and the harder she declaimed as Na'saa, the more convinced I felt she was pretending. Though I listened to this radio version of the epic many times, I was never reconciled to the character and always felt she should be revealed at the end as a monster in disguise. The person to whom I, and many of my generation, owe such memories is Zakariyya Al-Higgawi, a writer and journalist who in 1955, at the age of 41, was appointed as a folklore expert in the Arts Department of the newly established ministry of national guidance and entrusted with collecting and recording the oral folk heritage of the different provinces of Egypt, their music, narratives, rituals, customs and traditional social and religious celebrations. This interest in folklore and popular culture was part of the socialist policy of the state then and was seen as a way to empower the long oppressed classes, particularly the peasantry, and inspire them with a sense of dignity and importance. That was the time when the Mass Culture Organisation was established, when "cultural caravans" traveled up and down the valley, when experiments in communal theatre were conducted in small, forgotten villages and powerful productions were mounted in barns. Zakariyya Al-Higgawi was an important pioneer in this movement, turning all the oral folk epics he unearthed into popular radio serials, discovering and promoting many folk singers, like Mohamed Taha, Abu Deraa', Shawqi El-Qinawi, plus the female singers I mentioned earlier, and founding in 1958, under the auspices of the ministry of national guidance, Firqat Al-Fellaheen lil-Funoon Al-Sha'byia (The Peasants Company for Popular Arts) in which he served as dramaturge, composer, coach, general manager and artistic director. The company performed in regular as well as makeshift theatres -- usually marquees set up in some of the old quarters of Cairo, like Al-Muqattam and Al-Hussein. One also remembers Al-Higgawi as a competent composer who provided the musical scores for two movies, one on the life of Sayyed Darwish and another based on the popular ballad of Adham Al-Sharqawi, as well as contributing in 1957 to the conception, lyrics and music of the widely celebrated Egyptian operetta, Ya Leil, Ya 'Ein (the traditional opening words of a mawwal, or ballad, literally "O, Night, O, Mine Eye") which is often cited as a landmark in the development of musical theatre in Egypt. The 1967 defeat hit Al-Higgawi hard, as it did most Egyptians, and he became involved in the subsequent morale-raising campaign launched by the government, publishing in 1968 the first part of his Encyclopedia of the Popular Heritage in which he traced, or rather reconstructed, the history of the relationship between Jews and Egyptians through folk literature, traditional practices and popular beliefs. No other parts followed and the Encyclopedia remains an unfinished work. Like many distinguished artists and intellectuals, Al-Higgawi left Egypt in the early seventies, precisely one year after Nasser's death in 1970 and Sadat's accession to power. He found refuge in Qatar where he was offered a job as Folklore expert and died there in 1975 at the age of 61. Except for occasional airings, very few and far between, of the popular epics he dramatized for radio, Al-Higgawi seemed to sink into oblivion for over 30 years. It was therefore with a feeling of nostalgia and pleasurable anticipation that I went to Al-Ghad theatre last week to watch a stage adaptation of his serial radio epic Kayd Al-Nisaa', written and directed by Adel Anwar, with new lyrics by Mohamed Bahgat and a fresh score by Attiya Mahmoud. Unfortunately, not only did the production fall far short of my expectations, it also raised disturbing questions concerning the value system it implicitly endorsed and the kind of ideological message it seemed to put across. There was also the question of form, or, rather, the lack of it. In trying to update his material, or make it more dramatic, Adel Anwar sacrificed the general frame of choral narration, essential to such oral folk epics, and failed to come up with an alternative consistent formula. The clown who appears at the beginning to introduce the story and serve as a link between the past and the present is soon forgotten (one is startled at the end when he appears to take his bows) while the long, tedious shadow-puppet sequences (by Ayman Hamdoun), displayed on a screen at the top of what looks like the mouth of a tunnel centre stage, and accompanied by satirical songs about the corruption of rulers and the timid subservience of their subjects provide no structural links and seem at best purely ornamental. Shorn of its traditional epic form, original lyrics and music, the story of Kayd Al-Nisaa' lost its old charm and seemed more ridiculously simplistic and melodramatic than a medieval morality play: Husna (or Beauty, as the name means), a rich, selfish, unscrupulous woman -- vain, haughty and thoroughly bad -- falls in love with Saleh (literally, the Virtuous), a poor tinplater who is betrothed to his equally impecunious cousin -- innocent, pious Saliha, as her name signifies. When she fails to seduce him with her charms and promises of wealth, Husna sets in motion a series of evil intrigues with the help of her equally wicked cousin, ironically called Hassan, or Mr. Handsome, who is in love with both her person and her money, and a dallala (middle woman) of loose morals called Al-'Ayqa (an ostentatious female fop), very reminiscent of Mistress Quickly in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor. When she finally manages to tarnish Saliha's good name and get her charged with unlawful fornication -- a charge which carries the penalty of death -- Husna is shocked to find Hassan, who seems to have undergone a miraculous change of heart, suddenly betraying her and confessing all. At the end, Saliha is publicly exonerated and reconciled to her lover; the reformed Hassan, now significantly dressed in a white galabiya and draping a white scarf over his head in the so-called Islamic fashion, withdraws from the world to lead a life of repentance and pray for God's forgiveness, while Husna and Al- 'Ayqa are dragged away to their punishment screaming and cursing. As in most popular tales and folk narratives, the rich and mighty in Al-Higgawi's version of this epic do not cut very attractive figures and their greed and injustice are noted and morally condemned. Adel Anwar seizes on this aspect and blows it up in a specious bid for topicality and political relevance. Apart from the foisted, redundant musical-shadow-puppets interludes which constantly interrupt the action, he conjures up the ghost of Saliha's dead father, decks him up in so- called Islamic gear, places him prominently atop a flight of steps, and has him preach at us in fiery tones, urging us to take arms against our corrupt rulers in words which vividly echo the political discourse of Islamic extremists. This white-bearded holy "sheikh" cum political agitator is posited in the production as the only hope for the people's salvation, not only morally and spiritually, but also politically. Phrasing a political message in religious terms has become a sensitive issue right now and carries clear ideological implications. More to the point, such a message which claims that "Islam is the Solution" to all our problems, as the famous slogan of the Islamists proclaims, would have been completely alien to Al-Higgawi's thinking and socialist leanings. Fortunately, however, though the production seemed to interpret female honour in purely sexual terms and endorse the patriarchal view of female virtue as residing in complete dependence on and total obedience to the male members of the family and never venturing outside the home except in their protective company, it stopped short of giving us a veiled Saliha. Abeer Seif, who played the part, was attractively dressed by Heba Magdi who gave her no head cover, allowing her long, dark tresses to stream down her shoulders. But the person who really saved the show from becoming a boring propaganda sheet for a particular ideological trend, who constantly undercut and subverted its political-religious sermonising, restoring it to a semblance of the work on which it was purportedly based, was Salwa Khattab. As Husna, not only was she a treat to look at, she also, more importantly, opted for a studiedly artificial, faintly stylized method of acting, avoiding naturalism, never pretending she was more than a stock character, a stereotype among others, and constructing her performance out of carefully selected elements from the conventional routines familiar in delivering such stage types. In every thing she did or said one could detect a subtle, delicious hint of parody, as if she was mimicking the character while impersonating it. This had the effect of emotionally distancing the audience from the action on stage, of defamiliarising the old, familiar tale and allowing one to view it detachedly, critically, from a contemporary perspective. Indeed, Khattab's whimsical sophistication, lightness of touch and cunning tonal modulations reflected favourably on the performances of the rest of the cast, steering many scenes in the direction of satirical comedy, away from the muddy tracks of stodgy emotionalism and sham naturalism her fellow actors seemed intent on pursuing. Her droll amazement at the sudden reformation of both her cousin, Hassan (Mufid Ashour), and her profligate brother, Shalabi (Sherif Awwad), under the spell of the angelic, virginal Saliha echoed the mocking incredulity of the audience, allowing them to release it in laughter before they could accept the pretence with good grace. Take away Salwa Khattab and this version of Kayd Al-Nisaa' would hopelessly flop. Nothing could save it -- not Mohamed Gaber's versatile, carefully detailed multiple set, Mohamed Bahgat's lyrics, Attiya Mahmoud's melodies, Hisham Gom'aa's lighting, Heba Magdi's costumes or Nahed El-Karmoudi's beautiful jewelry and accessories. It is thanks to her and the salubrious, corrective humour she vigorously pumped into the dull, sentimental proceedings that this ideologically muddled, sloppily conceived, clumsily written adaptation gained some credibility and theatrical vitality.
