Nehad Selaiha finds the current revival of Saadallah Wannus's at Al-Salam vastly disappointing The phenomenal success of the recent revival of Lenin El-Ramli's 1980s Ahlan Ya Bakawat (Welcome Gentlemen) at the National has persuaded Ashraf Zaki, the head of the State Theatre Organisation, to re-stage, with most of the original cast, an exact repeat of another smash hit production of the late 1980s. Saadallah Wannus's 1977 (The King is the King), generally considered the dramatic apex of the first stage in the career of this brilliant Syrian dramatist (who sadly died of cancer in 1997, at the age of 56) opened over a month ago; and, judging by the regular appearance of the rarely seen "full house" sign at the box-office of Al-Salam Theatre, it promises to have as long a run as when it was originally aired. Based on a story from The Arabian Nights, the play tells of a king in the habit of wandering among his people in disguise whenever assailed by boredom. One night, he decides to amuse himself further by playing a practical joke on a poor, ruined merchant who is given to consoling himself with drink and visions of grandeur. The king decides to make the beggar a king for one day; he douses him with wine and carries him unconscious to the palace where he decks him out in royal robes and places him in the royal bed. But while the Arabian tale ends happily with the beggar finally restored to his real identity and the king resuming his, Wannus turns the joke sourly upon the king. Unlike his Arabian prototype, Wannus's king does not take his court into his confidence, "to laugh at their bewilderment when they spot the change," as he says. In the morning he discovers that none of his courtiers, not even his queen or aide-de-chambre, has spotted any change. Where does that leave him? When I first watched the play in 1988 it vividly reminded me of the old Chinese tale in which an emperor is conned by his tailor to parade himself naked in the streets, thinking he was wearing a sumptuous, magical suit which only the wise and intelligent could see. I remember thinking then how fortunate that emperor was to have remained recognisable as "the emperor" without the accoutrements of his position and its regalia. The punch line in the Chinese story is provided by a child who innocently cries out: "the emperor has no clothes on." Unfortunately for Wannus's king, no such child is around in the play. Once he removes his royal trappings, he loses his identity to the theatrical illusion he creates. Even the wife and daughter of the fabricated king who arrive at the court to seek justice and expose the corrupt state officials who have robbed them fail to recognise the royally disguised merchant. And how could they, if he himself seems to have completely melted into his mask and treats them as subjects and utter strangers? When the king's vizier, who is in on the hoax and has helped his master engineer it, suddenly decides to join the masquerade, the king's sense of reality and identity collapses and his mind gives way; at this point, the latent irony of the title, which cunningly sums up Wannus's message, bursts upon the audience with full force: the king is and, paradoxically, is not the king. This paradox is built into the structure of the play which is made up of two parts, each dramatising one interpretation of the title: while the first shows the king labouring under the illusion that in any guise and even naked he will remain recognisable as king, the second stages the cruel shattering of this illusion. Surrounding the central action -- the theatrical transformation of a poor merchant into king and of king into penniless merchant -- is a Brechtian chorus, representing a group of rebels conspiring against the regime, regardless of the human identity of the symbol who sits at its top. Besides taking part in the action and assisting in scene changes, this chorus provide barbed political comments against autocratic regimes of any colour and repeatedly alert the audience to the relation between costume and class distinction. The open theatricality of the play's conception and form extends to the stage directions in which Wannus, in the printed text, insists on the use of ritual, stylised acting, unnaturally, exaggeratedly voluminous costumes for the king, and a symbolic setting with a spiral throne. In staging the play in 1988, director Mourad Mounir stuck faithfully to the author's visual conception, adding some brilliant, inspired touches. Most remarkable, perhaps, were the exorcism ritual of the zar, which opens the play with a prophecy of the exit of one king, and the parallel subu' ritual (a colourful celebration marking the first week of a baby's life) which announces the birth of another. Another visually intriguing and potently symbolic directorial contribution was a red royal tent, topped with a huge crown, which, in the original production, was made to symbolically move in the second part of the play from the right to centre-stage, indicating a political shift from rightwing monarchies to liberal democracies and condemning both in favour of Wannus's socialist ideology. In the current revival, the tent is there still, but has lost its earlier splendour, dramatic mobility and metaphoric power. It remains stationary, or if it moves at all, one can hardly notice it -- such is the slapdash, slovenly execution of the original stage-design. The same shameful negligence extended to the costumes which, in this play, are of crucial dramatic importance. Here, they were pathetically cheap, garish and tawdry and failed to communicate the feel of authority Wannus intended. I still remember the thrill of excitement, the intense suspense and urgent, physical sense of menace I experienced over 16 years ago when Mounir's royal tent seemed to finally acquire a life of its own; in the last scene, then, it began to heave and contract like a huge, bloody womb, expanding all the time, then advanced mechanically, hugging the throne, to ruthlessly crush the rebellious chorus. This impressive theatrical gesture which visually pronounced the implicit ideological orientation of Wannus's play was sadly lacking in the current revival. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the play was first performed of course; the world political scene has vastly, almost unrecognisably changed and the seemingly omnipotent third-world rulers of yesterday have dwindled into helpless pawns in a hardly comprehensible global chess game. This may account for the feeble impact the play's message makes on the audiences of today. With the spread of terrorism worldwide, the eruption of sectarian hostilities and the appearance of Al-Zarqawi on television with no regalia of power except the memory of his terrible deeds, the central political argument proposed in The King is the King seems horrendously outdated and of little significance even if it is true. That the play's argument has become somewhat démodé and emotionally stagnant, unable to stir any real dramatic tension, deep or superficial, was eloquently apparent in the performance of the much- aged original cast. The chorus lacked the verve and lustre, the sense of urgency and passionate, infectious conviction they put across back in 1988. TV star Mahmoud El-Sa'dani who, playing the poor merchant, had so many years ago seemed like a whirlpool of unbridled, irrepressible energy, throwing the traditional rules of decorum to the four winds and managing to healthfully offend many conservative critics, displayed no zest whatsoever in the current production and performed as if he had been dragged against his will, crying and screaming, to do this repeat. Because he did not know his lines, or perhaps because he thought they were not interesting enough, he treated the audience to some very sloppy and maddeningly boring stretches of senseless, irrelevant adlibbing in which he poked tactless fun at his fellow actors and the whole establishment of the state theatre. And because he is a big, expensive star, the director could not control him and the result was that he wrecked the performances of all around him and communicated to the audience a profoundly damaging sense of futility. What saves the current revival, and let me be absolutely clear about it and forgo any shilly- shallying, is singer Mohamed Mounir. He has such a wonderful stage presence and, thanks to Mourad Mounir's original conception which turned the play into a quasi-musical, with explosively political lyrics by popular, colloquial poet, Ahmed Fouad Nigm, continues to draw large audiences. The majority of the audiences who flock to Al-Salam theatre nightly and crowd it to the point of suffocation do so because they love Mounir and want to see and listen to him and for no other reason. Though the content of the lyrics seems stale and outmoded, they still enjoy Mounir's voice and the elusive, romantic sense of authenticity he inspires.
