Nehad Selaiha finds watching Max Frisch's Count Oderland immediately after Georg Buchner's Woyzeck positively cathartic Buchner's Woyzeck (written 1836 and first produced in 1913) is a popular play with young actors and directors in Egypt and is sporadically revived, in one form or another, by theatre students in their graduation projects as well as by amateur and regional theatre troupes. The most sophisticated reworking of this text, however, was undertaken by Austrian dancer and choreographer Maria Lerchenberg-Thony in 1997, when she used it as material for a one-month dance-theatre workshop at Al-Hanager. By the end of the workshop the material had been shaped into a highly polished, graceful performance, alternately lyrical and erotic, ethereal and passionate and focussed exclusively on the eternal triangle at the heart of the play. In the interest of dramatic lucidity and force, Woyzeck, his mistress Marie and her lover, the drum-major (performed by Ahmed Abdel-Aziz, Reem Hegab and Ahmed Shafiq), were whisked out of their sordid, bestial social environment and romantically projected as elemental forces, archetypes or pure passions, locked in conflict on a cosmic stage, in a neutral, formalised, ahistorical context. This entailed sacrificing the thematic density, tonal complexity and earthy atmosphere of the original text and resulted in an interesting shift of dramatic focus. Marie, rather than Woyzeck, became the gravitational centre of the play. It felt as if the story was projected exclusively through her eyes and her moral dilemma as a woman torn between her overpowering sexual passion for one man and her loyalty and duty to another became the pivotal point. Exciting as this feminist reading was, it was ultimately reductive. It oversimplified Woyzeck's suffering to one aspect -- sexual jealousy -- and robbed him of his deep religious feelings, haunting sense of sin and harrowing descent into madness. One also missed the raw realism of the world Buchner depicts, his deliciously grotesque caricatures and many vivid vignettes. In Lerchenberg-Thony's scheme of things there was no place for anything coarse or sordid, obscene or vulgar, and in this rarefied atmosphere one could hardly imagine Buchner's drunken "apprentice" singing out loud in the tavern, in scene 12: "I'm wearing someone else's shirt/ My soul's a stink of drink and dirt," or delivering a farcical, blasphemous parody of a sermon and winding it up with four-letter words. Nor could one imagine Marie admiring the drum-major for being "broad as an ox" with "a beard like a lion" and hear the major retorting: "We'll start a stud for little drum-majors." The current Youth theatre production of the play under the new title Recruit No.311, hosted at Youssef Idris hall in Al-Salam theatre, reinstates Woyzeck as the focal figure and recovers for him (thanks to Nidal El-Shaf'i's sensitive handling of the part) something of his original complexity and pathos. It is, however, yet another adaptation and attempts to condense the text by cutting out, adumbrating or amalgamating some scenes. The number of the dramatis personae is reduced to six, the captain and the drum-major are compounded into one figure, all the marginal characters are removed and a clown in motley is provided to do what is left of their parts. Though it uses a single set (by Ahmed Sherbi) -- a dimly-lit, cramped, grimy room, with filthy, urine- stained, gray walls, hung round with old rusty buckets, broken chains and wheels and like objects, with a low platform and a single door at the back, and rubbish strewn everywhere on the floor -- this new version (adapted by Hatem Hafez) observes Buchner's original structure of abrupt, loosely related, autonomous scenes, with no firm chronological order or causal connections. Like the play the performance here achieved its impact through accumulation rather than causal development. Hafez kept most of the basic scenes and director Islam Imam cleverly orchestrated the movement of his actors to indicate the change of location without changing the set. The carnival to which Woyzeck and Marie go, the tavern where he sees her dancing with the drum-major, the fields where he wanders and talks to his friend Andres, the captain's room where he shaves him, the doctor's clinic and the humble room he shares with Marie are all contained in this one dreary set, suggesting that no matter where the downtrodden, spiritually crushed Woyzeck goes, his world remains a squalid, cheerless prison. The acting which ranged from melodramatic blustering and swaggering (in the case of Ihab Bakir as the captain/drum-major), to farcical caricature (in Ahmed Abdel-Hadi's doctor), to suppressed, intense emotion and mounting nervous tension (in Nidal El- Shaf'i's Woyzeck and Jessica's Marie) was geared to play down the sexual theme and highlight, by way of social and political protest, the tragic plight of the poor and helpless and the horrible physical and spiritual degradation they suffer at the hands of the rich and powerful. In this compressed version of the play, the horror seemed to mount at a breathless pace, without relief or respite. In short, quick scenes, we watched Woyzeck psychologically tormented, morally bullied and viciously knocked about by the captain; physically abused and humiliated by the doctor and treated like a laboratory guinea pig; sexually and morally betrayed by his woman under the pressure of need; and, finally, stripped of the last vestiges of male pride by the captain/drum-major who sneers at him, taunts him about Marie and saucily brags about seducing her. When finally, instead of taking revenge on his oppressors and tormentors, he turns on the only person weaker than himself, the equally harassed and victimised Marie, and vents his rage and frustration on her, the irony is too bitter to tolerate. The message Islam Imam and his crew wanted to put across reached the audience loud and clear. But in the process something of the text's animal vitality, robust ribaldry, iconoclastic audacity and elusive, wistful charm was lost. It was a positive relief to step into the big hall of Al-Salam theatre, after a short interval and a nice cup of tea, and watch Max Frisch's Count Oderland -- in the play that carries his name -- wave his axe in the face of all the rich and powerful and wreak havoc on their world. After Woyzeck it seemed a welcome, just retribution. Though available in a smooth, accurate and highly actable Arabic translation (by Anis Mansour) since the 1960s, the present Al-Tali'a production (also hosted by Al- Salam) marks the Egyptian premiere of this 1951 play. Why did it take so long to reach the boards? Director Maher Selim confessed to me that he thought it was "a trap" when the head of the state- theatre sector -- Hani Mutawi' -- proposed it to him. Other directors must have thought the same and shied away from it. It is a difficult, tricky play, riddled with question marks, and the dividing line between reality, dream or fantasy in it is never easy to discern or ascertain. Why does the hero, a distinguished, respectable public prosecutor and family man become totally, personally obsessed with a senseless murder case in which a perfectly sane and ordinary man kills an innocent stranger with an axe for no reason whatsoever? Was Frisch trying to suggest through it a kind of mysterious existential need or urge similar to the one that drives the hero of Albert Camus's The Stranger (1942) to a similarly senseless act? But, more to the point, does the prosecutor really disappear, or simply dreams he has done so? What about his wife and friends who affirm his disappearance? Could they be doing that as part of his dream? Did the murder case he reviewed as prosecutor turn him off balance or, perhaps, fuel a secret, rebellious, destructive urge buried deep in his unconscious? Was he finally incensed by his meekness in the face of his wife's infidelity and the bourgeois menage à trois she had forced upon him for so long and decided to escape? Did he suddenly discover how arid, lacklustre and monotonous his life as prosecutor was and is now seeking (whether in reality or his imagination remains a dubious point) a more romantic, adventurous one? But before you have time to sort out those problems, the prosecutor surfaces in the countryside and takes on the identity of the legendary Count Oderland, believing he is his incarnation. Like him, he uses an axe to rob and murder people and generally mess up the established social order, turning it topsy-turvy. Then he startles you by suddenly turning into a visionary, dreaming of some utopia where the shackles of convention can be finally crushed and all can be absolutely, anarchically free. With seven thousand followers similarly inclined (who spring from God knows where) he heads for the underground network of the city's sewers to look for his utopia and there barricades himself. His rebellion grows into a full-fledged revolution and he is asked by the old regime to take matters in hand and form a new government to put his programme into effect. Until his residence is ready, he is temporarily installed in the best house in the city -- which happens to be that of the vanished prosecutor. At this point, especially when part of the first scene is repeated, and Count Oderland reverts to being the prosecutor and announces he must have been dreaming, one is momentarily assured that what had gone before was only a dream. But Frisch does not let us out of the maze that easily. Within a minute, the city officials assure us it is no dream and Oderland realises he has been trapped into his dream of seeking unfettered existence and that, ironically, he is the one to head the oppressive power structure this time and forge new manacles. In desperation he commits suicide and, however tragic this seems, at least his death is real. Trying to follow this convoluted play with its many mind-boggling turns and twists is a dizzying experience which taxes the patience of the ordinary spectator -- and Maher Selim knew it. He insisted on realistic sets, costumes and lighting (by Amr Abdallah) and a naturalistic mode of acting for most of the characters in an effort to dispel something of its baffling strangeness and bring it nearer the audience. By contrast, the city officials were presented as satirical caricatures of all symbols of power and authority, perhaps to encourage the audience to find some accessible political message in the play. Izzeddin Taha's atmospheric music and vivid sound effects combined with the efforts of the cast, competently led by Salah Rashwan, Amal El-Zohairi and Walaa Farid, to create a strong illusion of reality. On the other hand, the eloquent computer graphics (also by Amr Abdallah) projected at the beginning of the play and showing, in turn, the face of every actor fading into an image of a human brain, were perhaps intended to suggest to the audience that reality, dream and fantasy are all constructions of the mind and, therefore, they should not bother to distinguish one from the other and simply enjoy the show. But throughout and up until the end, the intriguing ambiguity of the text persisted and the continuous clash between the highly realistic settings and acting the fantastic proceedings triggered a disorienting sense of unreality, completely in line with the text's mood, and a tickling sense of absurdity which was a constant source of amusement.
