Nehad Selaiha dips into Stanslav Stratiev's The Roman Bath at Al-Tali'a Al-Tali'a didn't look the same. Gone were the grassy patches and flower beds and the two ancient, majestic trees with their high brick borders where we used to sit out in the cool night air waiting for performances to begin. Gone too was the small shabby refreshments booth, tucked away at the far corner of the open courtyard, which provided a variety of drinks and cold snacks and thought to upgrade itself into a cafeteria by putting in front of it a few rickety tables and wicker chairs. I hardly recognized the place; the theatre had been closed for months for restoration and renovation and when it finally opened last month it had acquired a garish, soulless, new look. The old, fenced courtyard, which we once affectionately called 'the garden', became a bare, bald car park, with not a single shady spot in sight, and the shiny, harshly lit and vulgarly modern glass doors of the entrance suggested a posh electric appliances store rather than a theatre and ridiculously clashed with the old, modest, one-storey building on top of it. Apart from the entrance and a fresh coat of white paint (its original colour), the old building had not been tampered with, only now, in the absence of the huge tree that had stood outside it, gently sheltering it, it looked pathetically small and defenseless. As Mohamed Mahmoud, the artistic director of the theatre whom I met outside proudly gestured in the direction of the car park with a sweeping arm, telling me what trouble they had taken removing the two old trees, and how the roots of one of them had stretched all over the courtyard, reaching beyond the entrance into the under bed of the building, I found myself trembling with rage and it was all I could do to keep myself from slapping him roundly on the face. And it would have been immensely well deserved. Ironically, only a few days before that visit, it was reported by one of the daily, Arabic newspapers that one of the heavy metal scenery bars in the big (Zaki Tulaimat) hall in the theatre had crashed down from the flies during rehearsals, nearly killing all the actors on stage. To drive the irony deeper and make it grimmer, within a week of that same visit, the same newspaper described how the roof of that same hall had sprung a leak during the storm on 25 February, causing the heavy rain to soak the walls and floor of the auditorium and seep into the actors' tiring rooms and lighting and sound cabins. It had cost the State Theatre Organisation 7 million Egyptian pounds to get that theatre fixed, the newspaper went on to say, and now the private-sector contractors who had undertaken the job were disclaiming any responsibility for this mini disaster. And until this wrangle is settled one way or the other and, presumably, more taxpayers' money is wantonly poured into this theatre, a plastic sheet has been spread over the roof as a makeshift solution. When you learn that the job of restoring the fire-ravaged building of the National theatre next door has been entrusted to the self-same firm of contractors you will know what to expect. Fortunately, however, there is much more to theatre than a building, and though I hated Al-Tali'a's new look, I could not but admire the choice of the two productions with which it reopened its two halls: Mahmoud Diab's 1960s' historical tragedy, Ard La Tunbit Al-Zuhoor (A Land where Flowers can never Grow), a reflective, metaphoric take on the Arab-Israeli conflict, thoughtfully adapted and directed by Shady Soroor, who also leads the cast, on the traditional, proscenium-arch main stage, Zaki Tulaimat hall, and Stanislav Stratiev's vintage Bulgarian comedy, The Roman Bath, in the small (Salah Abdel-Saboor) chamber theatre next door. Both productions had been aired for just two nights last year during the 4th Egyptian National Theatre Festival in order to compete for the awards. Unfortunately I missed The Roman Bath then and only caught Diab's play, lauding the performance to the sky in my coverage of the event for the Culture section of the Weekly on 16 July 2009 (Issue No. 956). The review, entitled 'Classically yours', is available online for anyone who cares to read it and hopefully may persuade some readers to see this wonderful production. It was to see The Roman Bath that I visited Al-Tali'a in last month. Looking at the play's programme, which carefully listed the names of every one who had anything to do with the show, down to the name of the upholsterer, I noted with dismay that it neglected to put the name of the translator, Dr. Mohamed Sa'id Al-Jukhdar, who published this first Arabic version of the play in the Kuwaiti World Theatre Series many years ago, on the front page, relegating it to the last page and printing it in small type. But at least it was mentioned and not completely ignored as sometimes happens in productions of foreign plays. As an occasional translator of play texts myself, and knowing how, as a rule, literary translators are never adequately paid for their labour, I asked if the translator in this case had been paid any royalties. When the theatre's artistic director looked blankly at me and could not remember who the translator was, I got my answer. Such shabby treatment of translators, by no means infrequent in Egyptian theatrical practice, seemed egregiously unfair on this occasion; not only is The Roman Bath the first Bulgarian play to be performed in Egypt, it is also, as far as I know, the first Bulgarian literary text ever to be rendered into Arabic. Once inside Salah Abdel-Saboor hall, however, my feeling of resentment instantly evaporated, giving way to excitement and breathless anticipation. Guided by Stratiev's stage directions, stage-designer Rabee' Abdel-Karim had imaginatively transformed the whole of the small hall into a realistically concrete and thoroughly detailed image of the inside of Antonov's excavated flat, with ripped up walls, a gutted floor and an old, ornate Roman-looking bath sunk in the middle of it, sporting four marble statuettes of naked women in the corners and crisscrossed with wooden scaffolds, presumably to support it. An open-plan kitchen in one corner faced a big sofa at the other end, while a simple bed next to a window faced the single row of seats for the audience placed against the canvas-covered opposite wall. The entrance to the hall on the left served as the flat's outside door and faced another exit on the far right, labeled bathroom. Despite its ravaged look, the simulated flat had a simple, old-world elegance and an air of warmth and coziness, hinting at the character of its owner. Written in 1974, this ferociously paced satire about the status of 'the little man' in undemocratic societies remains to this day Stratiev's best-known and most popular comedy. Focusing on the clash between the needs of the individual and the interest of society, The Roman Both gradually reveals how the basic rights of simple individuals in totalitarian societies are consistently and ruthlessly sacrificed in the name of some so-called public good or national cause. According to one critic, "the original message of the play was to criticize the communist regime in Bulgaria during which social values were placed above the individual's and the system did not allow a common man to own anything of high importance or even be compensated for it, arguing that it should belong to society and be preserved for future generations." Returning from a vacation by the seaside, the protagonist, Ivan Antonov, a typical 'little man' (played by Mohamed Mahmoud) who likes to live in peace, finds his home overrun by strangers and torn apart. In his absence, the workmen he had left in the flat to put in a new floor had unearthed an ornate Roman bath from the Pompeian times. The relics of the bath have historical as well as financial value and their discovery turns Antonov's life into a nightmare. Archeologist Ananiev (Ayman Al-Sheewi), a pompous, hypocritical and self-seeking academic opportunist who is the first to rush to the scene to examine the discovery decides to claim it for himself and camps out in Antonov's flat to make sure that no one removes any part of it. He points out to the dazed Antonov that since the bath belongs to science and society at large and constitutes part of the national heritage, his flat no longer qualifies as his private property. That Antonov has no place else to live does not interest or bother the professor who has nothing to offer but highfalutin slogans and empty patriotic rhetoric. In the meantime, strangers keep pouring into the place, some to claim the discovery, some to share in the limelight, and others in the hope of persuading Antonov to sell the bath to foreign customers in exchange for large sums of money. These include the archeologist's angry and frustrated girl friend (Nivene Rif'at) who eventually falls in love with Antonov and sides with him, a shady art dealer (Gamil Aziz), a suspicious looking businessman with dodgy connections (Tariq Sa'id), as well as noisy reporters, status-seeking local councilors, and even a representative of the national union of lifeguards (Ashraf Abdel-Fadeel), fully equipped with lifebuoys, who is appointed to save prospective swimmers who might be in danger of drowning in the waterless bath! Faced with this farcical array of rapacious characters, Antonov realizes amidst the commotion that his voice does not count at all and that he has no place to live anymore. Consistently hilarious and even farcical at times, The Roman Bath is nevertheless a dark comedy with a serious theme that provokes reflection and invites comparisons. Despite the foreign names and setting, the play has plenty of relevance to Egyptian audiences, calling to mind the many scandals surrounding the smuggling of antiquities abroad and involving high officials, the plight of people rendered homeless by development projects or after the collapse of the rickety old buildings they inhabit, or the frequent newspaper reports of peasants in upper Egypt driven by poverty into doing ham excavations for antiquities inside their homes and often ending up falling down shafts or buried under the rubble. More significantly, it powerfully reflects the stupidity of officialdom and the system's crass indifference to the urgent, vital needs of ordinary citizens, as well as the blatant hypocrisy and opportunism of the so-called intellectual leaders of society and the cupidity and rampant greed of its new breed of businessmen. Watching Antonov desperately fighting to keep his home, I suddenly remembered the people of Nubia who were forced to leave their land, or were cheated into doing so with false promises when the Aswan dam was built; their plight was the same as that of Stratiev's little man. It is a credit to director Hisham Gom'a that his cast managed to convey the serious theme of this comedy while keeping it thoroughly entertaining and raising storms of laughter. To add to the comedy, some members of the cast adopted an exaggerated style of acting, relying on familiar comic types and amusing routines, and sporadically broke out of the classical Arabic of the translator's text to exchange phrases in Egyptian colloquial Arabic, bringing the comedy nearer home. Rabee' Abdel-Karim's curious costumes too, particularly in the case of Mohamed Mahmoud as the Egyptian Antonov, were also a source of hilarity, making some characters look grotesque and accentuating Mahmoud's boyish physique in contrast to Ayman El-Sheewi's tall figure and formal attire as professor Ananiev. To drive the play's message home, or, perhaps, to make it more appealing, Hisham Gom'a roped in the talents of lyricist Mustafa Selim and composer Sameh Isa to insert some songs in the colloquial idiom. It was a mistake, I think; the songs were embarrassingly sentimental and the play did not need them to make its point. Nevertheless, and despite its few faults and grim theme, The Roman Bath is one of the funniest plays I have recently seen on the Egyptian stage.
