THE ARAB-ISRAELI COOKBOOK. To 6 August.
London
THE ARAB-ISRAELI COOKBOOK
by Robin Soans
Tricycle Theatre To 6 August 2005
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Sat 4pm
Runs 2hr 25min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7328 1000
www.tricycle.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 July
Hearts eaten out as food is prepared.Arabs feel oppression, Israelis fear suicide bombers. But everyone has to eat. Including audience members, who are offered a taste of the Middle East as they leave. By when everyone is aware of the way enthusiasm for food, preparing, eating it together included, is a metaphor for natural zest in living. As someone says in Robin Soans' play transcribed from interviews in the West Bank and Israel in autumn 2003, it's the people who get up each morning and go to work who keep society going. And you can't keep doing that on an empty stomach.
Fadi, a student who only wants a decent tan, but whose complexion makes him look Arabic, carries a big bag of books he's studying law and medicine simultaneously earning him suspicious glances on a bus. He holds it in front of his face if he's going to die he wants his face whole. The object of fear to others lives in fear himself, but says life must go on.
As does Israeli Rena, visiting a chain-café targeted by bombers. She and her friend sit in terror, determined not to be exploded out of their social life. This voluble woman could easily be unsympathetic, but Amanda Boxer flaunts the loudness while showing the grit underneath.
She's only one of a splendid cast. Simon Trinder, recent comic star of the RSC Spanish season, brings flashes of humour here, but also the intensity with which his café-assistant lashes out verbally when a customer leaves his bag unattended, causing frozen panic. It's a moment that highlights the condition of life in the region.
Nicholas Woodeson quietly yet magnificently evokes a bus driver on a danger route, driving past his friend's bombed-out bus without stopping. Even he bemoans the fragmented body of the bomber, just as his café-owner laments a 16-year old suicide bomber. John Normington enthuses the audience with his whisky collection, letting us almost forget how home-pleasures become necessary when travel's frustrated by multiple Israeli road-blocks.
The Tricycle can't offer the shared space this show had last year at the Gate. But in building its accounts of fear and deaths around the food-process so basic to life Soans still gives us plenty to chew on.
Nadia/Rose/Vitya: Marion Bailey
Rena/Elti/Shoshi/Amal: Amanda Boxer
Mordechai/Ayman/Liron/Waiter/Naji/Mounther: David Ganly
Abdullah/Old Man/Aharon/Giora/Squash Club President/Neighbour: John Normington
Dinu/Daniel/Raoul/Mahamad/Friend: Daniel Pirrie
Levana/Hala/Myra/Rivka/Nina/Fattiyah: Abigail Thaw
Fadi/Assistant/Alon/Tim: Simon Trinder
Hossin/Customer/Abdul/Arnon/David/Aftab/Ya'akov/Mahmoud: Nicholas Woodeson
Directors: Tim Roseman/Rima Brihi
Designer: Ben Stones
Lighting: David Plater
Sound: Neil Alexander
Movement: Anna Morrissey
2005-07-19 08:30:52