Nehad Selaiha squirms as she watches a new commercial comedy Every time I drive downtown to Naguib El-Rihani theatre in Emadeddin Street it feels like a trip into the past. When the graceful khedivial buildings come into view, I feel a lump in my throat and it grows harder as I pass the old, once elegant Kursal café, now grown unrecognizably shabby, the dusty, shuttered entrance of the once bustling, now defunct, Mohamed Farid (later El-Hakim) theatre, and the site of the long-vanished restaurant/nightclub facing it, with its softly lit interiors and outside winking lights which I used to like to watch from the long glass window in the offices of the Theatre Magazine on the floor above El-Hakim theatre in the 1960s. Describing a visit to El-Rihani theatre in the Weekly, on 24 August, 2000 (issue no. 496), I summed up my feelings as "a tingling mixture of affection, nostalgia, despondency and deep resentment," then went on to recklessly declare that "a visit to this old playhouse ... whatever the quality of the play on show, is enough to reconcile you to the street." Well, it didn't last week, and I now realize how wrong that sweeping statement was. The quality of the show on offer does matter; it colours your view of everything and affects the whole experience in recollection. The 2000 article was written in the after glow of watching a taut and prickly satire by Lenin El-Ramli called E'qal ya Doctor (Wizen Up, Doctor). Now, Ahmed El-Ebiari's Mursi 'Awiz Kursi (Mursi Needs a Seat) is a different business altogether. Its general flabbiness, dull humour, lackluster dialogue, crude construction, shoddy acting and tediously unoriginal, dimwitted and clumsy comic routines were deeply irritating and cast a heavy pall of boredom over everything. The "small, ornate auditorium, with its gilded statues, red velvet seats and musty smell", which had seemed on the night I watched El-Ramli's play to possess "an old world charm -- a kind of irresistible shabby-genteel appeal," as I said in the 2000 article, now seemed tatty, garish and thoroughly repulsive. Whereas in the earlier experience I had benevolently looked on everything and even thought some of the most garish details quite cute, this time I found myself sharply registering, with dismaying clarity, all the distressing telltale signs of the slovenly renovation work the theatre had undergone: the cheap quality, unsuitable colours and sloppy application of the new coats of paint, the ragged appearance of the boxes, the ramshackle state of the gallery and its drab, derelict aspect and, most worrying of all, the dangerous absence of aisles on both sides of the auditorium to separate the stalls from the side boxes and facilitate a quick eviction in case of fire. If these faults were there when I watched El-Ramli's play, I did not see them, nor did I notice then the inordinate number of security men, more than I have ever seen in any theatre, who, this time, were conspicuously planted all round the auditorium, in the empty boxes, at all the exits, and even in the gallery. They were there throughout the performance and you could feel their eyes intently watching you. Their presence made me nervous and I kept wondering why they were there in such force and what exactly they were looking for or expected to happen. Had the theatre been tipped that an arsonist or a terrorist would be there that night? Or were they there in the interest of public morality to deter any of the audience in the back seats from indulging in amorous dalliance in the dark? Whatever the reason, their presence was heavy, menacing and distracting, and I would have resented it more and may be kicked up a fuss if Mursi had proved worth watching. As it was, anything that diverted your attention from the stage was quite welcome. Strangely, the man responsible for this theatrical offence comes from a well-known theatrical family. Ahmed El-Ebiari, who contrived this tattered text and spent good money to bring it lavishly into the world, is one of three brothers (the other two are Magdi and Yusri), all active in the commercial theatre as writers/producers since the late 1970s. None of them, however, has been able to match the technical bravado and comic inventiveness of their late great father. Abul So'oud El-Ibiari started off in the late 1930s, writing comic songs for music hall comedians and dancers, like Isma'il Yasin and Taheya Carioca, before turning his hand to musical farce and light comedy, contributing many to the repertoire of Badi'a Masabni's famous troupe in the 1940s and scores to the company founded by Isma'il Yasin in 1954. El-Ibiari ( pere ) was amazingly prolific, wrote quickly and with ease, knew all the tricks of the trade and thought nothing of plagiarizing and adapting foreign texts when his imagination dried up. His scripts were also much in demand in the film industry and by the time he died he had produced screenplays for no less than 450 movies, ranging from farce and melodrama to musical and romantic comedy. Though he was not original, what some would call a hack writer, he was a gifted humorist, an excellent craftsman and a master of construction. No wonder many of the films he wrote, including a whole series featuring Isma'il Yasin in the army, in the air force, in the navy, in the police force, at the wax museum, in the haunted house, etc., rank among the most popular comic films in the history of Egyptian cinema. The three El-Ibiari brothers may not have inherited their father's talent or technical expertise; but both his name and the scores of scripts he has left them, which according to some they keep reworking, make a good legacy. The name "El-Ibiari" on a billboard inspires confidence, and you never stop to think which Ibiari fils it refers to. It does not matter any way since there isn't that much difference between what they produce. All three write vaudevilles, choose catchy, colloquial titles for their plays, hire at least one star comedian to lead the show and go for the best directors and stage- designers on the market. In the case of Mursi and his Kursi, Ahmed El-Ibiari roped in popular comedian Ahmed Bedeir for the title role and secured the services of Khalid Galal, who was crowned best director in this year's Experimental Theatre Festival, and Hazem Shebl who won the prestigious Incentive State Award for best stage-designer a couple of years ago. But, alas! Not even a brilliant director like Galal or a gifted designer of Shebl's caliber could do anything to mend such an ailing text or breathe life into its awkward, wooden characters. The story, which is difficult to piece together from the plethora of disconnected scenes and fragmentary episodes, is quite paltry, does not make any sense and is not really worth the bother: Mursi, though of humble origins, is now a rich and successful computer engineer and happily married to a snooty, stuck-up television broadcaster of aristocratic descent. When she discovers that he is still keeping the traditional, local bakery he inherited from his father, she insists on divorce. Having reached this point, after many inconsequential episodes and irrelevant, meaningless digressions, the author suddenly veers in a completely new direction. Rather than develop the marital conflict and exploit its comic potential, he introduces a new conflict between Mursi and a corrupt member of the People's Assembly who is in love with Mursi's wife and convinces her to stand for election, promising to help her with his money and influence. To spite her, Mursi, who had earlier tried to pose as a composer of popular songs (though he knows nothing about music) simply to match her fame and failed, decides to stand for election in the same constituency, and the whole election rigmarole seems intended for no other reason than to introduce popular singer Sha'ban Abdel-Rehim into the show on the pretext of supporting Mursi's candidacy. For over 10 minutes, Bedeir, casting off the mask of Mursi, chaffed and twitted the seemingly doped singer about his penchant for hash, and another 30 minutes had to pass before the foisted, raucous concert came to an end. By that time it was difficult to remember why Sha'baan Abdel-Rehim had been summoned to the stage in the first place, and before we could remember, there was a loud bang-bang and someone rushed in screaming that Mursi's wife had been shot while campaigning and was rushed to hospital. This provides a lame excuse for a sequence of sketches about the evils of private, profit-making hospitals. When Mursi appears at the end of the sequence to visit his wife and pay the bill, we are startled to know that he has already become another rich, corrupt member of the People's Assembly and we watch him with incredulous eyes fatuously signing a blank check and sending it to his wicked rival, who also owns the hospital, leaving him at liberty to write down the sum it cost to treat his wife. At this point, over two hours into the play, I felt dazed and muddled and my mind began to wander. All I remember of the next hour is a bargaining scene between Mursi and his rival over the blank check and some compromising documents the former had against the latter, the sight of Mursi sitting in a gilded armchair with his assistants obsequiously milling around him then filing out, Mursi's wife, now mysteriously reformed and repentant, suddenly materializing when we had forgotten all about her and pleading with him to give up his destructive ambitions and go back with her to the old bakery. Whether he did or not, I honestly cannot remember. But who cares? The story was merely a pretext to stuff as many songs, dances, jokes and comic routines, sketches and clichés into the space of nearly four hours which felt more like ten. I would not have minded so much if it had been really funny. But, as you would expect, most of the laughter had little to do with the script; in most cases, it was triggered by the actors' improvisation which embroidered the dialogue with many scatological jokes, coarse sexual allusions, unsavoury mockery of physical human defects and some bantering among themselves. As I sat through this ordeal of a show, checking my watch every 5 minutes, thinking 20 had passed, and squirming in my seat, it gave me some comfort to think that poor El-Ibiari pere must be squirming in his grave as well. Mursi 'Awiz Kursi (Mursi Needs a Seat), by Ahmed El-Ebiari, directed by Khalid Galal, El-Rihani Theatre, November, 2008.
