Sheherezade or Sharazad, as she is called
in the Arabic version, is the heroine of the One Thousand and
One Nights production shown as its world premiere of the recent
annual Luminato (June 10 - 19) at the Joey and Toby Tanenbaum
Opera Centre in Toronto.
As children the world over believe it is a children’s story with
Alladin, Ali Baba, Sindbad the Sailor, magic carpets, magic
lamps with genies granting its lucky rescuer three wishes. They
are wrong. It is no children’s story. These thousand of
years-old tales were recorded by Arab writers hundreds of years
ago. They are seriously adult stories for grown-ups. These
stories are told under threat of execution, by a young woman who
is fighting for her life, and the lives of other young women who
come after her. They deal with life and death, with endurance,
with great journeys, with love and marriage, rich and poor,
ruler and ruled, fate and choice. Although they deal with
fantastic tales they are based in reality, and many take place
in the cities: the souks, streets, houses, courtyards of the
cities of the great Arabic Islamic empire.
Aladdin and Ali Baba slipped into the first French tales in the
late 1600s and the title Arabian Nights into the first English
publication in the early 1700s.
Dramatized and directed by Tim Supple’s U.K. theatrical
production company Dash Arts with an all-Arab cast who speak in
Arabic, French and English, it has been adapted by acclaimed
Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh and commissioned by Luminato.
The company’s A Midsummer
Nights Dream was a hit at Luminato 2008.
The classic stories embrace a vast area ranging from China to
North Africa.
They cover the rage of the King, Shahzaman, who discovers that
when he is away his wife and her serving women have mad sexual
orgies with the male servants. In revenge, the King swears that
he will sleep with a virgin every night and have her killed in
the morning.
Sharazad volunteers to stay with the King, tell him One Thousand
and One stories and save all the virgins in the empire.
The sexual orgy is rather affecting for uptight Toronto. Seeing
long black dildos onstage can’t have been easy for middle-aged
matrons. The scenes are really colourful and deeply engrossing,
the acting somewhat uneven, the costumes are wonderful colours
and the music sparkling. The three languages, Arabic, French and
English are projected on the walls of the very thrust stage, a
three-side viewing in the theatre. The stories are
breath-taking, and in the last hour, really funny. The seats are
uncomfortable and after the first three hours, we leave, a
little exhausted.
Lucile de Saint-Andre reports about film
festivals, art, entertainment, museum, exhibitions & travel. She writes
her own reviews. She is a successful writer with published books.
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