The inexorable wait for death is a rarely known thing. Perhaps that’s why Eric-Emmanuel Schmit chose to describe it in “Oscar and the Pink Lady, a simple yet poignant play of a 10-year-old leukemia patient’s last 12 days before facing death.
Oscar, whose letters to god are found by his designated hospital visitor, make up the substance of this play. But Oscar’s ‘pink ladies’, as they are called, aren t just visitors, but his spiritual sustenance during his final days.
A veteran wrestler, his visitor regales him with stories of her matches and gives him the emotional cheer when his own family, unable to cope with their only son’s imminent death, falls short. Among her tales is a legend that gives Oscar the chance to live a whole life in 12 days, counting every day as 10 years.
Mutanawy’s adaptation, despite diverting from the conventional casting by denoting an extra narrator for Oscar’s letters as well as The Pink Lady, faithfully conveys Schmitt’s message. “If it were only one actor, it would have taken a great deal of training to get the different characters, Mutanaway said.
Yet, having Mohamed Saleh, playing Oscar by becoming the narrator of his letters, gives a kind of immediacy. Oscar’s voice is permitted expression in its own right, rather than mediated through his elderly friend. Of course the impact of this on audience empathy can only be truly judged by one who has seen the conventional method, but it probably suffices to say that by the end of the performance, there were few dry eyes in the house, a barometer of success if there ever was one.
But the play isn’t exactly rocket science: the text direct, the cast minimal, the message universal and the innocence of childhood – perhaps a ‘life is short’ metaphor – all perfect conditions for any actor. However, as with any play that relies on an ‘on stage’ script, the danger that actors might become hostage to their scripts was ever present.
Yet despite these rudimentary dangers, Mutanaway, whose directorial competency has already been rewarded by being chosen to represent Egypt in the international experimental theater festival, chose to set the scene at a table with two reading lamps for each player.
Eschewing actor movement is risky in a play, which although is based on a novella, is not notably short. But, through soft lighting, coordinated by Mutanaway himself, as well as the absorbing power of the story, the absence of activity on stage projected the play’s existentialist dimensions and the emptiness of death.
Detached from the scene of the hospital bed, the table and the two reading lights – an allusion to the act of writing – becomes the mise en scene. Yet Arbaab Hakim’s animation stills – projected onto the back of the stage, presenting illustrated scenes and figures from Oscar’s world – negotiate the somber setting with a taste of childhood innocence.
When asked whether he thought there was any hidden symbolism in the play, Mutanaway replied, “It’s very straightforward, it’s a charming play that says what it means, that death is a certainty we all face and that we should live life for today. This particular play is about Christianity, but Schmitt also wrote about Islam in ‘Flowers of the Quran’ and Judaism in ‘Noah’s Child’.
He was interested in these spiritual and religious questions; how people deal with death is one of his prominent themes.
The death of a 10-year-old boy cannot be anything but tragic, but through his 110 years, each day a decade, he experiences love and marriage with his beloved ‘Peggy Blue’, whose face has a bluish hue from her medication.
However, with this tragedy comes a life-affirming humor: “Can you have babies from kissing with tongues? asks Oscar. Apparently you can, but it’s rare, replies The Pink Lady.
Endowed with such graceful understated but nevertheless touching moments, “Oscar and the Pink Lady is a perspective into premature death whose balance between the two worlds is thoroughly weighted among the living.
