Preview: Arab Nights Part 2 of 3

Following on from Part 1, here are two more questions from the interviews with Poppy Burton-Morgan (director), Raja Shehadeh and Tania El Khoury on their show Arab Nights at Soho Theatre which is inspired by the 1001 Nights stories and the recent and ongoing uprisings in the MENA region.

Other than its setting, what appeals to you about the tales of Shahrazad?
Poppy: I love the mixture of magic and fantasy with social satire and political commentary. With the original tales, there is a perception in Britain that the 1001 Nights are rather ‘soft’ stories for children but the original tales are full of sex and death, and satirising of oppressive regimes. Also I find the character of Shahrazad herself a huge inspiration – a brave young woman using the power of her words (rather than brute force or her beauty/sexuality) to confront and eventually transform an oppressive tyrant.

Raja: First and foremost they are wonderful tales, highly entertaining and so well narrated. Then there is the world in which they take place, a lighter more permissive, bawdy world colourful, rich with imagery and without the narrowness,  pettiness and abnormal fragmentation that blights the Middle East of today.

Tania: Not a lot appeals to me about the tales of Shahrazad. I wrote my piece independently of 1001 nights. It’s the director’s concept of putting the different pieces in the setting of the tales of Shahrazad.

Why is myth useful here?
Raja: It allows me to free myself from the constraints of present-day reality and see it as absurd and unsustainable. I can express the yearning that is felt by many in the region to transform the way things are now. It also helps to overcome the fatigue that stifles ambitions and makes it harder to even dream of a better future.

Tania: In thinking about the past two years in the MENA region, one has to consider the ways in which a number of myths about the region were disrupted and shattered. For too long, there was the myth of the endlessness of authoritarian regimes, the myth that what had transpired over the past twenty years, sponsored and celebrated by international powers, was reform; the myth that the United Kingdom, the United States, and other Western powers were committed to principles of democracy, and the myth that the peoples of the region were complacent and accepting of the status quo in their countries, and so on.

All of these myths were shattered. Dictators were forced to flee. Regimes were brought down. The people spoke loudly and acted in unison. The fallacy of Western democratic commitment was exposed through the UK/US’s support for regime change intervention in Libya and regime survival intervention in Bahrain. All of this was clear to those of us with critical perspectives prior to 2011, but unfortunately mainstream coverage, commentary, and analysis perpetuated such myths.

Final Question: Can you tell us something about the place of dictators and control in these short performances?

Pandora’s Box at Arcola Theatre

In Pandora’s Box, talented playwright Ade Solanke looks at Nigerian families who send their western-born children back to Nigeria for their secondary education and in doing so, she cleverly reminds us of the persistent racial issues that exist in the UK and the changing world-view of countries like Britain and Nigeria.

But the issue of old-school education vs liberal London living is an issue that an audience is likely to approach with its mind already made up and Solanke offers little to challenge us. As this play goes back and forth discussing whether a child needs his “mother or his motherland”, her arguments become too neat and her unevenly developed characters fail to pick up on some of the more, indefinable, universal issues that are present in this play.

One such issue is the bond between mother and son as demonstrated by the confused and cautious Toyin, who gives in to her 15 year-old son Timi’s adolescent requests and typically remains unaware of his activities. As she contemplates leaving her son in Nigeria to keep him safe, Toyin – herself the daughter of a mother who left her homeland to seek a better life – makes me question how much of this is a gender issue. Are mothers too soft on their sons and prepared to take drastic measures for them over their daughters?

Though this isn’t what Solanke is getting at in Pandora’s Box, my question is addressed briefly in a sideways manner as Toyin clashes with her older sister, Ronke – who was left in Nigeria by their mother – and her friend Bev about where Timi is better off.

What comes tumbling out of this cleverly taught set-up is a useful, often hilarious discussion of social values, modulated by the sporadic arrival of Toyin’s clown-like uncle who thinks Timi should stay in London. However, amidst the humour of these characters it becomes abundantly clear that while Bev and Ronke – two superb performances from Yetunde Oduwole and Petra Letang –  are steeped in ambitions, opinions and hurt, Toyin is remarkably one-dimensional, defined only by her current predicament leaving actress Anna- Maria Nabirye with little to work with.

This unevenness is present throughout the play which hasn’t quite decided how much credit to give its audience. There are some five-star scenes which arise from natural conflict and present us with something important, unclear and ripe for discussion; like the one in which Ronke turns on her London-born sister and calls her  “ a second class citizen of an undeveloping nation”.

But there are too many scenes that explain far too much, spelling things out for us unnecessarily and simplifying the arguments which inevitably whittle down to gang culture in London vs all work no play Nigerian education that supposedly makes better men out of young boys. But there is much more to this multifaceted issue that Solanke doesn’t elevate in this undeniably hilarious but simplistic play.