Nehad Selaiha catches two more plays at Al-Hanager's season of independent theatre Though writer, director and actress Nora Amin was active in the university theatre, taking part in plays directed by fellow students who later became famous professionals, like actor Khalid El-Sawi and stage-director Khalid Galal, it was not until March, 1993 that she made her professional acting debut, treading the boards of Al-Hanager for the first time as the Virgin Mary in a cheekily iconoclastic production by Mohamed Abul Su'ood's Shrapnel troupe called Deir Gabal El-Teir (The Monastery of the Village of 'Gabal El-Teir', literally 'Birds' Mountain'). Since then, she has starred in at least a dozen plays on the fringe, produced either by her own troupe, La Musica, which she founded in 2000, or by other independent groups. Her most memorable parts include Abigail in the Shrapnel adaptation of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, rechristened The Left Foot of Night (1997), Phaedra in The Lady of Secrets (2001), also a Shrapnel production, and the predatory mother in The Box of Our Lives which she herself wrote and directed for her own troupe in 2000. When Huda Wasfi, the artistic director of Al-Hanager, asked her to take part in the Centre's current independent theatre season which started on 20 March, she decided to use the opportunity to celebrate the 16th anniversary of her first appearance on that selfsame stage and devised a performance specifically to showcase her range and virtuosity as an all-round stage performer. The result was Women in his Life, a cheerful and boisterous two-hander which she herself wrote, directed and co-acted with professional pianist, singer and composer Mohamed Hosni, with a simple stage-set by Ibrahim Gharib consisting of a grand piano, a synthesizer, a chair and a few drapes at the back, and a variety of colourful costumes that could be easily and quickly changed, designed by Huda El-Bably and Sherine Rashid. Cast in the form of a comic, musical revue, Women in his Life consists of a string of sketches each centering on a female that the protagonist, Hosni, who keeps both his real name and profession in the show, knew at one time in his life and conjures up from memory as he shares with the audience his life story, the problems he faced and the ups and downs of his career. The gallery of female characters recalled by Hosni and impersonated by Nora covered a wide range of different ages, varied psychological and social types, emotional tones, accents and dialects, ranging in style from parody, caricature and comic stereotypes to realistic, convincing and highly sympathetic characters, some bordering on the tragic at times. They included: his mother, a kind but officious, traditional housewife who thinks music a thorough waste of time; his studious and obedient child sister who is held as a model daughter by his mother; his first sweetheart, a silly and coquettish teenager; the servant girl from the country who tried to seduce him; a crass, low-class pupil and her coarse mother who tried to trip him into marrying her daughter; his two much sinned against ex-wives who were driven to leave him; the Spanish girl he fell in love with but deserted because she could not get rid of the habit of kissing him in the street; two pop singers, one American whom he met during a spell in the States, the other Egyptian, working with a humble band and dreaming of stardom and money; a veiled, aggressive bourgeois woman who demands a fat fine when his small car bumps into her big and sturdy Mercedes which is hardly scratched while his own car is reduced to a mass of twisted metal; a vampirish and vulgar middle-aged showbiz star who promises him wealth and fame in exchange for betraying his integrity as an artist; and a former, gifted colleague who let her talent and voice go rusty after marriage and lives to repent it. The sketches followed each other in rapid succession, with hardly a few minutes in between for costume changes, and Hosni filled in those minutes with a little narration, some songs and bits of classical and oriental music played on the piano. For Nora, it was a veritable acting marathon and required great stamina. She slipped out of one character and into the next with ease and dexterity, occasionally singing and performing some strenuous dancing. Of course, Nora is not a singer, but she could perform a simple song creditably and in the case of hard and complex tunes, she wisely recited the words of the lyrics softly while the music played in the background. It was a highly enjoyable evening which had the spirit of a real party and succeeded in displaying to the best advantage not only Nora's performing talents, but those of her partner as well. Al-Misaharati troupe's Viva Mama, which followed, was trickier, more complex and far more ambitious. Based on 3 Egyptian novels by 3 different writers -- Sayed 'Uwais's The History I Carry on my Back, Bahiga Hussein's Ordinary Tales to Pass the Time and Sabri Musa's The Man Who Did and the Master Who Didn't -- as well as some improvisations by the actors, and seeking to highlight some of the many debilitating political disappointments, betrayals and setbacks suffered by generations of Egyptians from the 1920s onwards -- and wanting to do this in the space of an hour and a half, and through the chatter, squabbles and ordinary conversation of an upper middle class family as its members go about their daily business of sitting down to meals, preparing to go to work, or coming back and withdrawing for a siesta after dinner -- presented director Abeer Ali who put together the final text with a horrendous dramaturgical task that many would shy away from. To give her material a coherent form that would yield at the end the desired message and drive it home (and what a bleak message it is!), Abeer Ali hit upon the image of a big family home inhabited by three brothers of different ages and ideological leanings, their only sister and the wives of the two elder ones, and ruled over by an invisible mother who is discovered at the end to have been dead and rotting all the time without anyone realizing it. Ali prepares for this discovery by inserting the recurrent motif of the bad stench the family members complain of all the time and fail to track down. And as if that was not gruesome enough, this family home is also haunted by the ghosts of a dead uncle, the paternal grandfather and mother, in period costumes, and an old, aristocratic friend of the family who lived alone with her cats and often took refuge from her loneliness by visiting the family. As the living and dead characters, all vividly drawn and sharply individualized through the dialogue, are played off against each other, ideological conflicts and disillusionments are revealed and whole periods and sad historical events are evoked. At the end, when the backbone of the family, the mother who has been built into a symbol of all that was once good, healthy and beautiful in Egypt, is discovered dead, the title Viva Mama strongly echoes Viva Patria and acquires a poignant, ironical twist that sums up the play. It was also a brilliant idea putting all the characters and the audience on stage round a T-shaped table, with two old doors back and front, one leading from the auditorium to the stage to let the audience into the dining-room set, and the other opening out onto the other dark and rarely used auditorium of Al-Hanager (originally designed as a traverse stage) and used as the room where the corpse of the mother has lain all along. At the back, a group photograph of the living members of the family graces the wall, while individual photos of some of the dead ones hang on the other walls. Needless to say, this stage design, which was Abeer's own idea, created an intensely intimate atmosphere which enhanced our reception and suggested that we, the spectators, were also members of the same unfortunate and doomed family. What marred the show in my view was the initial cheery sequence in which the actors welcomed the audience, joked with them and treated them to an old, comic song dating back to the 1950s while they set the table. It was absolutely the last thing one expected and struck a jarring note, shattering the mood of secrecy and suspense one was put into by the mysterious narrator who stood at the door facing the auditorium, gazing down at us enigmatically and somewhat pensively before he invited us to file in quietly into the family's dining room. The presence of a narrator automatically distances the action, suggesting that we would be seeing the drama through his own eyes, especially since he hovers round the scene throughout the play and is constantly in view, occasionally providing comments, information and explanations. When the actors ignored us and acted to each other as characters they were at their best, and whether the mood was light or somber could draw us emotionally into the drama and even acquire a Chekovian air. Thank God this happened more often than not.I suppose the initial cheery bit, the occasional direct addressing of the audience and the foisted songs were all a hangover from Abeer's previous shows which mostly adopted the old form of the popular 'Samir', offering a relaxed, informal evening's entertainment consisting of stories, songs, skits and jokes.
