Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Shakespeare Meets Saddam Hussein
Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Given the frequency with which Shakespeare is reinterpreted for contemporary times, perhaps the news that Richard III is being done in Stratford as an Arab dictator should come as no surprise. But it does! And how interesting. The NYT sums up the road from Shakespeare to Saddam and beyond:

As played by the Syrian actor Fayez Kazak, the title character in “Richard III: An Arab Tragedy” is a preening, plotting devil with the vulpine intelligence and maniacal charisma of the late Saddam Hussein. But he is not Mr. Hussein, even if the director and adapter of the play, Sulayman Al-Bassam, briefly conceived of him that way.

“It was clear that once I’d gone into the process of research into that historical parallel that it was a sort of a non sequitur,” Mr. Bassam said. And so, commissioned to bring an Arabic production of “Richard III” to Stratford as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s yearlong Complete Works Festival, Mr. Bassam set his play in an archetypal present. His unnamed oil-rich Arab state is easily understood in Shakespearean terms, every bit as steeped in blood, riven by tribalism and replete with corruption as the world of 15th-century England.

The form has freed him to consider contemporary Arab politics in a way that would have been all but impossible without the refracting mirror of Shakespeare, said Mr. Bassam, 34, who is half Kuwaiti and half British. “You could write such a play,” he said, musing on the notion of a present-day political work, “but you’d be best advised to set it in England in the 1400s. That would be a very good starting point for your contemporary play.”

Labels: Europe, Islam

Posted by B Feiler at 7:15 AM
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