Anybody who’s been fortunate enough go to university has probably been unfortunate enough to have been subjected to the genre of performing art known as “college theater. It more often than not comprises of the epithetical ‘minimalist’ stage and as few actors as possible to aid minimal direction.
Perhaps I’m being a little harsh. I’ve seen some damn good university productions in my time, but – my bad luck – in a ratio of about 50:1. The vast majority of these performances are, I’m sorry to say, profoundly mediocre.
As was “Victor, American University in Cairo’s latest production that gives “food for thought – according to one blogger involved in its production. Following the performance staged at the Howard Theater on Tuesday, I was undecided on whether the ingredients were bayza (putrid) or they just weren’t cooked well enough, so I just let it stew over a kibda (liver) sandwich after the show.
The verdict? Probably both. It’s not that the play’s writer Alain Knapp isn’t well respected on the French theater scene, but the entire script was misplaced somewhere between the absurd and the tragic.
It seemed to start with the stilted logic of the former. On an entirely black-washed stage, with simple but professional lighting, a woman, in a rather stylish green coat tentatively buzzes over an intercom. Her would-be hostess answers with a barrage of questions before reluctantly letting her in.
There’s a generous helping of miming pressing buzzers and failed attempts of working the intercom, before Blanch, the lady of the house, comes to let Elsa in. There’s an awkward meeting between the two where it’s revealed that Elsa’s surname, like Blanche’s, is Hauser.
The plot initially seemed fairly promising, but the rather unnatural, heavy exchanges leave the audience disoriented and emotionally disconnected. A heavy-handed translation from the French could be to blame, but it was saturated somewhat by the performances of Samia Asaad (Blanche) and Sarah Abdel Razak (Elsa), who’s monotone representations of their respective characters did little to lift the accusation-riposte colloquies that ensue.
Elsa, we discover, in a quixotic venture of curiosity and romance, has come from Zurich to find her estranged, and, as she discovered, bigamous husband, Victor. Following Blanche’s aforesaid rebuff, there comes, out of nowhere except some vestige of absurdity, the virtual space for dialogue.
The audience hears a replay of Elsa’s tragic past. It should have been shocking, but Abdel Razak underplays the monologue on the lighter side of subtle. As in the rest of the play, expressions failed to give meaning to weighty revelations.
Asaad, however, suffers from a different theatrical ailment. Relying on a few overused character-defining physical movements, she hair-tousles and jewelry-fiddles her way through the play. Vocally, she might be in a sun lounger somewhere on the coast of Florida. This might be fitting for an extravagant wife-turned-manic-depressive, but it quickly turned into tired stereotyping.
A clumsy set change ushers in the second half where Victor is revealed as ‘a monster’ whose sudden schizo-esque change of character led to his wife’s emotional and physical breakdown. After hearing Elsa’s tragic bio of how the obscure Victor destroyed her life, the tables are now turned, and the lady of the manor strips off her own facade.
It should have been putty in an actor’s hands. Unfortunately, the story of self-destruction trips to and fro from a mental sanatorium, unsympathetic nurses and self-harm, and lost most of its punch. Marred by self-conscious hair flicking and leg crossing, Asaad did little to convey Blanche’s plight. Save for a few confused yelps of “No, the performance lacked passion; she might have been complaining there was too much ice in her Pina Colada.
And hence the set becomes an obvious symbol for Blanche’s miserable existence. But it would have been more tragic and ironic had the set designers been more imaginative in creating a semblance of Hausers’ luxurious abode.
Initially intrigued by the concept of the ambiguously absent bigamist, after a staid performance, I no longer cared. Victor’s charisma, as a virtual character, and as a play was marred by mediocrity.
