Nehad Selaiha enjoys another box-office hit by Lenin El-Ramli at the National In politics, what goes on behind the scenes can be far more interesting and edifying than what gets reported in the media, including the so- called sensation-mongering 'yellow papers.' In the 1980s, two 16-part BBC television series, Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister (both by Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn) made wonderful comic capital out of the goings on in the kitchen of British politics. In them, Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne, the former as the naïve, high-minded but ridiculously inept minister, then prime minister, and the latter as his wily, slippery, but thoroughly bureaucratic secretary, created a memorable bungling duo comparable in hilarity to Laurel and Hardy. The same formula is at work in Lenin El-Ramli's Zaki fil Wizarah (Zaki at the Ministry) which opened at the National in mid-January. Here, however, the minister in question (performed by film star Hussein Fahmi) is only a minister in his own imagination and does not get to be a real one until the very end, as the curtain is about to close. For close on three hours, Zaki, a disgruntled academic, as idealistic and innocent as Eddington's minister, falls a prey to hallucinatory delusions and acts as if he has been appointed minister after a cabinet reshuffle. His temporary madness is brought on by the fact that the same prime minister he has been virulently attacking in the opposition press for months has been asked to form the new cabinet. For Zaki, this spells the futility of all his critical efforts and the end of any hopes of change. The same round of corruption, nepotism, favouritism, moral flabbiness and haphazard decisions will be repeated once more. But what if the prime minister were to ask him to be part of the new cabinet despite his barbed articles? Would he compromise and accept to cooperate with a man he deeply despises in the hope of effecting the needed changes? Can such changes really take place given the rampant corruption in the whole system? Would he be able to resist the tide and preserve his moral integrity, or would he succumb to temptation and go the way of the devil? These are the questions which initially trigger Zaki's hallucinations and propel the subsequent dramatic action. Politically frustrated, like most Egyptian intellectuals, Zaki is forced to secretly admit that mere words, in the form of articles or university lectures, are hopelessly ineffectual, and that without real power, in the form of a responsible governmental position, his knowledge and all his constructive ideas are useless. For a while, he loses his grip on reality and, in a spree of wishful thinking, as it were, he decides to rehearse the experience of being minister. To dramatically tread the thin line between two theatrical illusions -- Zaki's home reality as a brilliant, idealistic, but quite impotent intellectual, and his ministerial hallucinations -- was a difficult challenge to El-Ramli's dramatic expertise, theatrical craftsmanship and technical know how. Against the advice of his director, Isam El-Sayed, his leading star, Fahmi, and the rest of the cast who wanted to keep Zaki's madness a secret till the end and spring it on the audience as both a surprise and a resolution of the conflict -- in the all-too-familiar cliché of --it was all nothing but a dream� -- El-Ramli insisted on keeping the audience in the know throughout, placing illusion and reality side by side simultaneously, as it were, and defying the audience to tell which is which at all times. This puts a great burden on the writing, of course, but even a greater strain on the performers. Constantly moving between the two theatrical illusions, they are required to be credible in both, to visibly suit their deportment and outward conduct to both, not to mention being attired differently. The scene and costume changes were quick and dizzying. Though I had read the play before seeing the performance, I caught myself at times wondering where we were and in which illusory realm. Hazim Shebl's clever, composite set, which could be turned all the way round, back to front, or sideways at a split second to reveal different locations -- the living room in Zaki's house, his office at the ministry, the prime minister's office, a vestibule outside it, or an inner, mental space, bordered by accusing mirrors and shrouded in darkness (in the internal monologues scenes) -- was a wonderful feat of theatrical designing. Na'ima Agami's costumes, too, subtly reflected the play's constant trafficking between dream and reality; though uniformly realistic and contemporary, they carried a palpable touch of the whimsical in the hallucination scenes. The acting, however, fell far short of El-Ramli's design. Except for Hussein Fahmi as Zaki, and Liqa' Sweidan as his daughter (the fact that they have recently married in real life despite the age difference tickled the audience no end), as well as the magnificent Sami Maghawri as Zaki's servant, both at home and in his imaginary ministerial office, and as the epitome of the wise, long oppressed, but eternally charitable and kind Egyptian 'fellah', the rest of the cast, particularly Hala Fakher as Zaki's wife, Sha'ban Hussein as his doctor, and Hussam El-Guindi as his moronic son, seemed quite ill at ease in this quasi-realistic political farce. However hard they tried, they could not tune in to the author's teasing dramatic prevarications and, consequently, overacted, often obliterating with their heavy plodding and sedulous comic endeavours the intriguing fine lines of El-Ramli's composition. For the play to work and achieve its full impact, absolute credibility on both levels, the realistic and imaginary, is required. This, however, seems to be a tall order for actors bred on simple comedies and trained to transmit on only a single wavelength. The other actors who only figured as projections of Zaki's imagination -- Omar El-Hareiri as the prime minister, Yusef Isma'il, Isma'il Gamal, Rushdi El-Shami, Yaser Badawi and Mohamed Mamdouh as his ministers, Mohamed Radwan and Bayoumi Fu'ad as Zaki's aides, Yasser Faysal as the offensively vain football star, Mahmoud Khalil and Hanaa Sa'id as the obsequious, bribable journalists and Salwa Osman as the vapid video clip Madonna -- had an easier job. They could get away with stereotypes and caricatures since the parts they performed partook of both conventions and drew on topical media images. Conveniently limited to one world, they felt on surer grounds and opted for farcical parody galore. At certain points, however, the topical parody seemed to take over the whole play, shoving the overall plan into the shadows. Whether this was the fault of the actors or the writing is hard to say. Nevertheless, the play came through. That the idealistic Zaki could not long resist corruption and eventually employed his daughter's hypocritical, opportunistic fiancé (Hamada Barakat), as his secretary and advisor, and allowed him to seduce him into many shady dealings, was not surprising. Power corrupts, as the old proverb says, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But in Zaki's case, power is not absolute; rather, it is severely hedged round and constantly contested. From the initial question: what can I do to save the youth of Egypt? Zaki progresses to the question: how many compromises do I have to make in order to realize my ideals? and ends up asking: shouldn't I first secure my future and the well-being of my children before I begin worrying about other people's future and well-being? Every question forms a stage in the development of the action and marks a stage in the deterioration of the main character. When finally Zaki is forced to wake up from his dream and to recognise that he is not as smart or intelligent as his name describes him, he is suddenly faced with the prospect of becoming a real minister and declares to his daughter, who urges him to reject the summons of the new prime minister, that he has learnt a lot from his hallucinatory spell and is sure not to commit the same mistakes. Whether you believe him or not is up to you. The end could spell either a new beginning and a new play, or simply a repetition of the old, sardonic, political farce. Old, cynical me left the play embracing the latter option. The system always wins.
