DAMASCUS. To 7 March.
London.
DAMASCUS.
by David Greig
Tricycle Theatre To 7 March 2009,
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Sat 4pm & 25 Feb, 4 March 2pm.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.
TICKETS 020 7328 1000.
www.tricycle.co.uk
Review: Carole Woddis 9 February.
The twain meet in play by educated dramatist.
Damascus may be a state of mind. On the other hand, David Greig’s play came from actual experience, running playwriting workshops in the Middle East. “Whatever the Arab writers learned, the workshops ended up teaching me an enormous amount about the complexities of relations between the west and the Arab world.”
Something of that ingenue quality lingers in Damascus, in which Paul Higgins’ Scottish writer (a Greig alter ego?) finds himself in Damascus trying to sell English language text books to the Syrian authorities. In the process, he falls in love with the translator, Muna, a woman who knows all about betrayal. Seemingly a Syrian loyalist (secular, feminist, egalitarian), she is accompanying her superior, Wasim, her former university tutor, now Education Minister, who indoctrinated her in more ways than one.
Fervent yearnings runs through Damascus, as does an obvious sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
The play is a curious hybrid – part ode to the Middle East, part thriller, part tragedy, part linguistic playground. I loved it for its quiet humanity, its quirky humour and for the way Greig, in Philip Howard’s modest but effective Traverse production, captures the strange charms of that turbulent world. Vice versa, the play also enunciates the perverse attraction of the west to those living in the Middle East, particularly through the plight of Zakaria, the hotel porter, desperate both for sex with western women but also for Paul to take `his story’, his manuscript, back to the west and in some fantastical dream, to Hollywood. Escape is his goal and when it proves unobtainable, existence is unbearable without it.
Casting a sardonic eye over all of this is club pianist, Elena, unconvincingly announcing herself to be both a former KGB agent and trans-sexual at the end. Nothing is quite as it seems; everything an accretion, winding round the truth.
As a play, Damascus has its lapses. But, as always with Greig, also so much to enjoy - Muna’s exchange with Paul about the changes his English text book must undergo to become palatable to Syrian tastes is an object lesson in the relative values of words, according to their social context.
Elena: Dolya Gavanski.
Paul: Paul Higgins.
Zakaria: Khalid Laith.
Muna: Nathalie Armin.
Wasim; Alex Elliott.
Director: Philip Howard.
Designer: Anthony Macllwaine.
Lighting: Chahine Yavroyan.
Sound: Graham Sutherland.
Composer: Jon Beales.
Damascus was first presented at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2007 where it won a Scotsman Fringe First award. It tours to North Africa and the Near East after its Tricycle run.
2009-02-15 18:45:43