The problems facing a couple planning to tie the knot is not exactly an original topic. The recurrence of problems spanning the gamut from lack of money to the objection of some family members, and jealousy or being possessive have been dealt with time and again in movies, plays and fiction.
But the new perspective of “A Boy, A Girl and Other Things, now showing at Al Salaam Theater, is one that lightly touches on these difficulties, attributing the failure of many couples to achieve compatibility to social and political forces which are bound to distance the couples from each other and from their own surroundings.
Written by Rasha Abdel Moneim and directed by Hany Afifi, the 45-minute performance brings Mona and Emad, a young couple who, like many people their age, are starting their own life with lots of obstacles. Fouad, who appears along with the couple, is a 60-year-old widower wistfully reading his own diaries in the backdrop.
Emad and Mona laugh when they should be sad and are depressed when they should be joyful. They agree, differ, fight and exchange remarks of intimacy but to no effect, because finally, we understand, they see no point in developing a relationship even when obstacles are surmountable and the road to stability is open.
Fouad, however, is not reading to us lines from his diaries that reflect any tangible difference in his situation: Like the young couple, he and his wife must have had disputes, fights and dilemmas but at no point did these affect the basis of their wedlock.
But why is there a dramatic development in the youngsters’ outlook?
“Regrettably, today’s young people have a pessimistic view with regard to the future, Afifi told The Daily Star Egypt.
“Their dismal outlook on society and politics have caused parents to take pity on the younger generation. The older generations had genuine and sincere feelings that never faltered, he said.
“The older generations had to struggle against colonial forces, social inequity and other injustices, but that struggle, on the contrary, added to their emotional lives.
“The couple here is listening to news of the invasion of Lebanon by Israeli forces, but they are not reacting. They aren’t interacting with the outer world as if their privacy is one realm that is disassociated from the rest of their surroundings.
For the director, that desperation has resulted from and is in line with a state of affairs which has reached a dead-end, leaving no scope for hope or action.
Afifi’s theatrical tools perfectly reflected these morbid conditions, overwhelming the stage with dim lighting, where the darkness matches the characters’ sense of loss and disenchantment.
Their frustration remains implicit so as to reflect their lack of awareness about their dilemma. Something is wrong, but what is it?
The stage is divided into three parts that show the different levels of the crisis. Scattered in the backdrop are garbage and leftovers, all of which depict the prevailing chaos that represents the present and the past that new generations have failed to fathom.
Fouad stands in the middle of the stage, next to a gramophone that echoes one of Om Kulthoum’s love songs which stand for an era where the majority of young people enjoyed stories of love and courtship. Mona and Emad appear at the front; they are bringing into focus a void they can neither understand nor fill.
“A Boy, A Girl and Other Things is a short but significant piece, one fraught with many questions but few answers.
But who is there to guide the couple? Is it necessary to change the entire status quo? Or is their problem exclusive to a certain category of young people? It seems the director is trying to say that the failure of the relationship echoes the couple’s failure to identify with their homeland, and the inertia that nourishes the social and political havoc where their frustration implicitly originates.
