EGYPTIAN stage Director Shadi Sorour's new experimental play Flowerless Land lives up to the expectations of the audience with its evocative title and content, which tackles the present lamentable socio-political scene of the Middle East. The play, featuring Eman Ayyoub, Shadi Sorour, Khalid el-Nagdi, Manal Zaki, and Tareq Sharaf, recently opened at the State owned Theatre of Al-Talea (the Vanguard) in Attaba in central Cairo (02/25937948). The audience laughed and cried alternately as they watched two ministers try to win the heart of the Queen of Hera, who wanted to kill, both of them. The play is entertaining and educating because of Sorour's accessible message that describes the Arab world as a woman torn between two bad lovers, who had killed her father when she was young. Flowerless Land is a play packed with facts, whose strange title explains everything happening in the region. "When hate, revenge and deception are rife among the rulers and people of a given region, the land will not produce flowers or love," states Sorour, who blames globalisation for the current social, economic and political problems facing the Arab world. Sorour added that Flowerless Land, based on a classic play by Mahmoud Diab, seeks to make the audience aware of the serious inter-Arab-disputes that are gripping a part of the world better known for political tensions. "The Queen is plotting a revenge against her two ministers, who pretend that they love her, whereas in fact they do not. She hates them and they hate her. In the end, she kills herself because she could not get rid of them and their evil intentions for their country," Sorour explained. Diab's strong text and Sorour's directorial approach have paved the way for talented young people with aspirations to become actors, highlighting the present woes of the region through vivid symbolism and an old Arab story Flowerless Land exposes the region's present problems through an old Arab tragedy, whose theme is hate and where revenge kills hope. Director Sorour believes that experimental theatre is not a new method of exposing and explaining the inter-conflicts that permeate the region. Every night the theatre is packed with a young audience, who want to learn about their region and its problems, which could be solved through love and sowing the seeds of flowers not hatred. "There cannot be one solution without the other. There has to be love and forgiveness," Sorour maintains. However, because it is a bleak narrative play about hate and death, Flowerless Land is an odd choice in Egypt, where happy endings are the norm to attract the average audience. The play's plot depicts aspects of the region's decline and gives death as the solution to its problems after the central figure of the drama, Queen Zeeba, kills herself in a tragic scene. The political themes capture many of the audience, because they heighten their worries over the future of the Middle East and increased discontent with Arab governments. "There is a great similarity about what happens in Flowerless Land and what is happening now in the region," declares Sorour.
