Look at this wonderful review from The Guardian's Lyn Gardner. So I can only hope the play will come soon to a theatre near you. See it in Oxford tonight if you can. (The Oxford site also has a Flickr slideshow.)
The play is good anywhere. It has clearly found an admiring niche here in Britain. But the primary (though not the only) audiences for Ashtar's Richard II, I would argue, are Palestinian and Arab audiences. So what did the Arab papers think of it? The Jericho reviews were very strong, but in London most couldn't get past the symbolism of it coming to London.
A richly informative report on the earlier show in Jericho is reprinted in the Iraq-based online cultural magazine Alefyaa. The reviewer quotes from Ghassan Zaqtan's very gracious translator's note, as well as from the program note:
Writing the only real review I found so far, on the BBC Arabic site, Anwar Hamid praises the show's "splendid" performances, noting the cast's "confident" movement on stage and the rapt enthusiasm of even non-Arabic-speaking groundlings. All he finds to take issue with (and this is a fairly typical cultural fetish) are some cast members' pronunciation errors in classical Arabic: "because language, gramatically and phonetically, is the most important element of theatrical performance":
More PRE-view coverage is here (Shorouk), here (reprint of a BBC piece in which several actors are interviewed, invoking the cultural arrival marked by playing Shakespeare in fuSHa, and director Connall Morrison is interviewed, invoking the Arab Spring), here (Al-Youm 7), here (Fatah - there's also one on WAFA), and here (reprinted from al-Jazeera.net, apparently more interested in the composition of the cast and the event of the festival, with Palestinian Ambassador to London Dr. Manuel Hassassian and the Palestinian charge d'affaires in attendance, than in the show itself).
Also in Shorouk, from the "Mommy how come they get to go and we don't" department, this plangent piece bemoans the "demoralizing Egyptian absence from the World Shakespeare Festival": "This absence ... notably contradicts the history of Egyptian cultural preoccupation with the works of Shakespeare..." Ramses Awad's book is used for background on the commemoration of the tercentennial of Shakespeare's death in 1916:
The play is good anywhere. It has clearly found an admiring niche here in Britain. But the primary (though not the only) audiences for Ashtar's Richard II, I would argue, are Palestinian and Arab audiences. So what did the Arab papers think of it? The Jericho reviews were very strong, but in London most couldn't get past the symbolism of it coming to London.
A richly informative report on the earlier show in Jericho is reprinted in the Iraq-based online cultural magazine Alefyaa. The reviewer quotes from Ghassan Zaqtan's very gracious translator's note, as well as from the program note:
وجاء في كتيب وزع قبل العرض ليل الاربعاء “ريتشارد الثاني احدى مسرحيات شكسبير التي تدور احداثها حول السلطة والسياسة وتملؤها الدسائس والخيانات كتبها شكسبير عام 1595 وتدور احداثها حول سقوط عائلة مالكة بريطانية وظهور عائلة مالكة جديدة بمساعدة لوردات البلاط… حكاية مثيرة تظهر لنا ما معنى ان يكون المرء ملكا وكيف تفسد القوة المطلقة صاحبها في نهاية الامر.
According to the flyer handed out Wednesday night before the show: "Richard II is one of the Shakespeare plays whose action turns on power and politics; it is filled with plots and betrayals. Written in 1595, it revolves around the fall of a British ruling family and the rise of a new ruling family with the help of the lords of the royal court... an interesting story that reveals to us what it means for a person to be a king, and how absolute power ultimately corrupts its holder.The report also quotes interviews with several actors, including Jordan-based Sami al-Mutawasi, who came from Jordan to star as Richard. Al-Mutawasi notes the cast members' broad international experience and draws connections from the play's plot to recent political events not only in the west but, to his surprise, in the Arab world:
واضاف “كل عمل مسرحي يوجد فيه رسالة سياسية قوية… والاحداث السياسية تتشابه عند الشعوب. وكما ان هذه المسرحية تشبة اشياء كثيرة في الغرب صادفت ان تشابه اشياء كثيرة تحدث الان معنا وهي مراة لواقعنا.”
Writing the only real review I found so far, on the BBC Arabic site, Anwar Hamid praises the show's "splendid" performances, noting the cast's "confident" movement on stage and the rapt enthusiasm of even non-Arabic-speaking groundlings. All he finds to take issue with (and this is a fairly typical cultural fetish) are some cast members' pronunciation errors in classical Arabic: "because language, gramatically and phonetically, is the most important element of theatrical performance":
مأخذي الوحيد كان على تكرر الأخطاء النحوية على لسان ممثلين رئيسيين، وهو شيء مؤسف، فاللغة، نحويا وصوتيا (فونيتيكيا)، هي أهم أركان الأداء المسرحي. حتى يكون الأداء مؤثرا يجب أن تكون المعارف النحوية للمثلين المسرحيين على مستوى عال، وكذلك يجب أن يكونوا متمكنين من مهارات النطق الأساسية: المخارج الواضحة للحروف والتلون الدرامي للصوت.
More PRE-view coverage is here (Shorouk), here (reprint of a BBC piece in which several actors are interviewed, invoking the cultural arrival marked by playing Shakespeare in fuSHa, and director Connall Morrison is interviewed, invoking the Arab Spring), here (Al-Youm 7), here (Fatah - there's also one on WAFA), and here (reprinted from al-Jazeera.net, apparently more interested in the composition of the cast and the event of the festival, with Palestinian Ambassador to London Dr. Manuel Hassassian and the Palestinian charge d'affaires in attendance, than in the show itself).
Also in Shorouk, from the "Mommy how come they get to go and we don't" department, this plangent piece bemoans the "demoralizing Egyptian absence from the World Shakespeare Festival": "This absence ... notably contradicts the history of Egyptian cultural preoccupation with the works of Shakespeare..." Ramses Awad's book is used for background on the commemoration of the tercentennial of Shakespeare's death in 1916:
A sad al-Ahram preview makes the same point: at this "international cultural event," Egypt will not be represented, though Palestine and Iraq will. Al-Afaq and El-Gornal note it too.واللافت أن هذا الغياب المسرحي المصري عن مهرجان شكسبير العالمي، يأتي وكأنه مضاد لتاريخ اهتمامات ثقافية مصرية بأعمال شكسبير حتى أن الجامعة المصرية احتفلت في عام 1916 بمرور 300 عام على وفاته بتظاهرة ثقافية بالغة التميز بمعايير ذلك الزمان.
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