2) Click here to access review entitled "A Timely Play for Egypt Today" by Nehad Selaiha from Al-Ahram Weekly.
After reading the first review, memories of many such vital plays came flooding back into my mind from late 1960s and early 70s when young people were questioning everything. I especially recall the ones performed in Milwaukee (Milwaukee Repertory Theater), Chicago (Second City), UC Berkeley, and San Francisco (especially the SF Mime Troupe). Since then I've seen nothing of such gripping quality. After reading these reviews, I wanted to "hop a plane" to Egypt to
Both of the above reviews were about Ibsen's play "An Enemy of the People", adapted and performed for the Egyptian audience of today. The first review, currently published, provides a much more subjective reaction to the play, while the second, reviewed earlier this year, is more comprehensive and objective, and provides many more details about the production. Together they complement each other very well.
The play, very creatively adapted and directed by Nora Amin, deals with some of the most profound questions not only facing progressive/revolutionary people in Egypt, but across much of the world today: can a revolution by ordinary people raised and indoctrinated in authoritarian, class structured, competitive, and materialistic societies create a socially just and inclusive society capable of living in harmony with nature? How can ordinary people, many with characteristics and personalities as depicted in the play, and which we all recognize in others and even in ourselves, create such a society? Consider such characteristics as described by reviewer Selaiha:
Ahmed El-Salakawi played Hovstad with the debonair charm of a man of the world, hiding his opportunism, moral cowardice and lack of principles under a mask of urbane geniality and candour. By contrast, Imad Hassan’s Billing, a character as hypocritical and unprincipled as Hovstad, was rendered as vulgar, gauche, ridiculously pretentious, slightly stupid and very easy to see through. Imad El-Raheb’s Aslaksen was dangerously smooth and slippery. Assuming the appearance of virtue and humbleness and a sanctimonious, obsequious, submissive manner, El-Raheb managed to betray by the look in his eyes, his tone of voice and body language the real baseness and moral unscrupulousness of the character. Ibrahim Gharib...[was cast] as the Mayor, Dr. Stockmann’s brother, and he performed the part with fitting stolidness, stodginess and pompous self-importance, showing no emotion and hiding behind his stern appearance the pettiness of his soul. Gharib’s Mayor was a typical specimen of Eliot’s hollow men, with a headpiece filled with Straw.