When you try to snare friends into going with you to attend what your editor describes as “interesting and “veers towards the bizarre, but unwittingly blurt the words “experimental and “modern theatre-slash-dance, don’t be surprised when friends politely suggest you meet them afterwards.
Only when the curtains rolled down did I realize that the performance I was about to watch (and to which I snuck in a little late) was actually postponed, and instead I was watching Omar Khayyat’s “Les Passagers shown as part of the ongoing Ninth Festival for Modern Dance Theater.
My editor was excited about the prospect of hearing me complain. He talks film, so he understood when I mentioned the scene in “The Party where Peter Sellers plays an extra and takes forever to die.
Gravitas oozes from Khayyat’s play about “the last 35 minutes of a person’s life inside a box. Upstage on the far left, the protagonist, played by Emad Ismael, complains of life, work and sundry matters, while shaving, taking a shower, getting dressed, and running, all (commendably) behind one podium-space.
On the right a figure seated and rooted to the stage in waist-length cotton, sharpens his axe, cuts with it with (again commendable) believability, considering the object he cuts is thin air, and later holds it in a spot and spins it when our protagonist grows hysteric regarding work. Coordinated figures in the back appear, moving from left-to-right, towing objects behind them, while the narrator speaks of his life.
Mostly, Ismael’s character complains about work.
The play begins with a grocery-list recital of professions: “Hallak (barber), Zabaal (garbage man), mowazaf (civil), doctor, gazzaar (butcher).etc.
Presumably this embodies the mechanization of life into specializations and routines such as shaving, taking a shower, getting dressed, eating. Yet, I couldn’t help thinking of Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times and wondering if it could have been a little lighter.
It does get funny when the protagonist, having run a couple of meters on-spot saying “We shtagalt we kbirt, we aadit ashtaghal laghayt ma ba’eet homaar (I worked, I grew old, and worked some more until I became a donkey). “Homar (donkey) is repeated again and again till at the last sigh in between words, it turns into a bray.
The monotony of grays and black-and-white is also broken onstage with the red of a watermelon, the music between the ever-present background grinding noise – signifying the grind of daily life – while a mention of the smell of sea suggests a life outside the box.
At the very end, a bier is carried to the sound of ululations. The axe-wielding figure on the right has already quietly closed himself up in a box. Our character, meanwhile, covers up all orifices with tissue or cotton signifying self-silencing and repression, and then finally, hangs himself.
He goes down in a move where it looks like he’s going underground in an elevator, and disappears behind the podium for the final time. The podium now is turned into a screen projecting scenes of color and hope, of people and vehicles passing by – somewhat reminiscent of the figures that previously accompanied the character’s narration.
The final scene features two figures holding hands in camaraderie and joy, played to music that recalls the feather-falling scene in “Forrest Gump. Finally a helium balloon is released from the podium, set-free from this bondage of a box. Figures appear onstage again from left-to-right, each with a helium balloon tied to their neck, raising their hand, pointing upward and onward, perhaps to something better.
The lightness and hope of these few moments are uplifting and you almost want to join the cheering crowd in its enthusiasm, but you realize that you are perhaps glad to have escaped the undue solemnity.
Inspired by Albert Camus’ essay on “The Myth of Sisyphus, Khayyat’s play grants an inordinate amount of heaviness to life, which becomes a stone that one has to drag uphill, and be dragged by as it pulls you downhill ad infinitum.
The helium balloons go a little way towards lightening you up, especially when you hear the words of your companion who says, “If you don’t write a good review, they’ll just say you didn’t understand.
You go to the ticket-seller, to complain that you missed your original, re-scheduled performance. But apparently, it’s all the same to him. “You can go in again. No charge.
But having just witnessed a long-drawn funereal procession onstage, you truly have to do something else.
