Theatre group Utopia’s performance of El Kelab, The Dogs, in El Sawy Culture Wheel on Sunday was an interesting effort. It tried to deal with many nuances and complexities and provide social and political commentary. It used an accessible form of humour that inevitably made it easy to sit through. ‘Sit through’ is not, however, an expression one prefers to use when speaking of a work of art and yet, for the most part, this is what the experience felt like.
The humour in El Kelab is sadly both repetitive and unimaginative. It did get a laugh here and there, but the very accommodating audience mostly smiled during the performance. In fact, were it not for the unnecessary attempts at comedy, the play would have worked much better. That is not to say that it did not have other faults, but the decent effort that was put on stage last Sunday by the up-and-coming Utopia theatre group deserves to be commended.
A good portion of the audience seemed to be personally acquainted with the actors, which would explain the willingness to enjoy the play. It created a pleasant ambiance and this had a positive effect on the appreciation of the evening for those who came solely out of interest.
The premise of the play was interesting, however, and revolved around an author who is unable to face reality. He then creates the perfect girl and a perfect match for her, after which he falls in love with her and ends up trying to tear the couple apart for the remainder of the play.
The writer fancies himself a deity as he plays around with his characters’ fates and their lives. The characters soon start rebelling against his overreaching powers and try to subvert his authority. The writer realises, early on, that he is living through a work of fiction in quixotic fashion and is aware of the absurdity of the situation yet is comfortable with it.
At the end, he is forced to face reality and rips the script of his play apart, in a highly dramatic fashion, which garnered much applause from the audience.
One of the interesting techniques the play used is that it never failed to remind its audience that they were watching a staged performance and it tried to include the audience members several times in an attempt to break the illusion of reality. Unfortunately, they did not do a particularly good or original job in using this theatrical tool.
The play challenges the notion of reality and theatre but in such a simplistic way that it failed to show much insight or ultimately say much, if anything, that is profound or even useful. Much of this show of meta-theatricality was wasted and merely furthered the plot line instead of being used to reach anything of more value.
To say that no value could be derived from the play is too harsh, but attempting to deduce profound insights felt often as if I was reading too much into what I was watching. And it did not help that the ambiguity of the play, which could have afforded the spectator the benefit of the doubt, was destroyed by the often rather mediocre performances of much of the cast. Though some of the supporting actors gave solid performances, this unfortunately often only emphasised the weaker performers than lift the play overall to a higher level.
The play is still, however, a decent effort by a group that boasts a few talented members. And for those interested in the premise of the play or supportive of new theatre initiatives, it is definitely worth the time to attend a performance.
