As El-Warsha Theatre Company broaches Tawfiq El-Hakim, Youssef Rakha perceives a happy convergence Years after the little mourned death of Egyptian theatre, at a time when shows divide unequivocally into commercial cabaret and state- sponsored didacticism, any production of Tawfiq El-Hakim's Rosasa fil-Qalb (A Bullet in the Heart) is an event to be welcomed. Received opinion, that the play is at best an outdated piece of whimsy, is based wholly on the 1940s film -- a song-studded, sentimental romance with Mohamed Abdel-Wahab and Raqia Ibrahim. But Rosasa fil-Qalb, written in 1932, is an experiment in quartz-precision marivaudage, drawing on this relatively minor tradition of French drama to imbue the contemporaneous "art of furja (watching, as in a performance)" with the qualities of high arts that Egyptian theatre had never before displayed: refined craftsmanship, subtle emotional focus, intellectual import and the deep-seated understanding that, however life-like a play might endeavour to be, in the end, it should always remain a game, a confidence trick, a lie the audience will happily believe. Such qualities Rosasa fil-Qalb perfectly demonstrates. Unlike the younger Youssef Idris, author of Al- Farafir, for example, for the most part El-Hakim drew on neither colloquial Arabic nor everyday life, developing, instead, a concept of "intellectual drama" that has worked in theory but seldom on stage. Yet he was a passionate furja exponent for a good part of his youth. He befriended disreputable performers, attended moulids and defended theatre in old-guard literary circles that regarded it as a form of dissipation. When he was sent to France the intention was to turn El-Hakim, the "bohemian" artist walking around Mohamed Ali Street with the slipper-shod musician Kamel El- Khola'i, into a respectable lawyer. This kind of dichotomy informed his entire career. Placing himself in the sanctified arena of literature he endeavoured to establish drama as a serious literary form: drawing on the Qur'anic story of the people of the cave, in classical Arabic, he made his name with Ahl Al-Kahf. Held in the Jesuits Association Garage Theatre in Alexandria (a Cairo premiere, with modifications, took place a week later on the Tali'a stage), the opening of El-Warsha Theatre Company's "Jawla Oula" (First Round) of Rosasa fil- Qalb marked not only the return of Egypt's leading "independent" troupe to full-length productions but the first ever stage show of El- Hakim's unaltered colloquial Arabic text. (The play was transformed into a piece of light entertainment in a different medium, but except for two recent adaptations that departed from the original, it had never been performed as intended.) A concern of director Hassan El-Geretly since the troupe started -- El-Hakim's life and work has been a frequent "research" topic -- the play seemed to promise both furja and high art in the same breath. The drama revolves around three characters: the delectable Fifi (Vania Exerjian), an aristocratic example of what El-Hakim would come to call "the new woman"; her pragmatic fiancé, Sami (Ahmed Kamal), a physician with as much interest in Fifi's wealth as her person; and the latter's friend Naguib (Boutros Raouf), a carefree state employee who spends more than he earns and engages in continual drinking bouts and love affairs. The dramatic complex occurs when, bumping into Fifi by chance, not knowing that she is engaged to his friend, Naguib falls in love with her. It is resolved when Fifi falls in love with Naguib in her turn, finally to be rejected by him: he is too loyal to his friend; he is always in debt and, as he incessantly tells her and the audience, he could never be an accommodating husband. Played by three El-Warsha veterans who are far from being conventional matinée icons -- something that acts to strip the drama of its veneer of superficial appeal -- the characters seem timeless in a somewhat disturbing way. Amr El-Rakshi's sets, Nahed Nasralla's costumes and Elisabeth Ifergan's makeup are inspired by styles prevalent in the 1930s. They are possibilities rather than requirements of the world the text describes and in this sense they serve to aid the imagination without restricting its operation -- a modern artist's adage that holds particularly true on the contemporary stage. Professing a performer-audience game, El-Geretly keeps that world unreal. The play draws on Western and Arabic music as well as paintings from the period. Yet rather than placing the action within a predefined time frame or inducing in the audience any sense of nostalgia, such visual and aural references tend to diffuse the historical tension. As some audience members commented following the premiere, it appears as if these people -- or, rather, these artificially constructed types -- have suddenly sprung out of a human void; their mannerisms (some individual, some due to character-building exercises) and colloquialisms (some outdated, some resulting from El-Hakim's concern that the dialogue would be deemed too informal) contribute to this sense of displacement, arguably the strongest aspect of the show. Nor does Nancy Abdel-Fattah's lighting -- abundant, appropriately varied, subtly coordinated with both the sets and the action -- take away from the impact of an atmosphere as painstakingly created as the text. The show is reminiscent of the best of El- Warsha (Dayren Dayer, Ghazir Al-Leil) in that it is theatrically integrated, evincing a wholeness to which more individually beautiful components would not have given rise. Rather than extravagant aesthetics or innovation it is this wholeness that defines the appeal of theatre, the kind of spirited theatre for which appreciative audiences remain desperate. And whatever the final verdict on his achievement, it is the ability to suggest it that sets Hassan El-Geretly apart. One has the feeling that, following a long hiatus, he is back on track. The actors' performances, for one thing, are as sober as they are engaging, preserving the text's highly stylised comic appeal and cutting short the tendency to misinterpret it as a love story brimming with emotional overtones. Not a line is pronounced amiss, nor a gesture made in vain. Comedy as understood by present-day commercial theatre is a ludicrously mawkish affair in which the urge to induce laughter spoils everything. In this version of the unperformed classic, by contrast, the laughter -- effortlessly induced, seemingly accidental -- proves admirably refreshing. Naguib at one point exits crawling on his tummy to signify disappointment in the fact that his love for Fifi has turned out not to be reciprocated; Naguib's bawwab (brilliantly performed by Ramadan Khater in Alexandria, the part proved equally absorbing in the hands of Medhat Fawzi in Cairo) engages in evocative, role reversal routines with his master; and some of El-Hakim's lines, with the benefit of spot-on interpretation and the irony their anachronism generates, turn out to be hilarious. The climax of the play involves a wholly stylised episode in which the bailiffs who come to seize Naguib's furniture -- an extremely subdued presence in the text -- recall stock figures in Mystery cycles; their menacing, slightly new-age costumes and makeup, no less than their exaggerated gestures and tendency to sing their lines, contrast sharply with the tight-strung dramatic route along which the action has so far progressed, providing unsuspected relief while preparing the audience for the quiet denouement. Fifi has offered her love and Naguib rejects it. He is no good for marriage, he says, puffing on a cigarette in the dim light. Fifi stands to one side while the lights gradually go out. And as the applause echoes -- the Cairo audience seemed especially delighted with the show -- one has the feeling that it acknowledges not only the work of El-Warsha but that of a paradoxically unknown champion of modern theatre -- the ivory-tower icon who provided the text.
