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| Edinburgh : A&E : Theatre : Reviews |
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Theatre listings > Majnoun. - Tour. Playwright - Mehrdad Seyf. Director - Mehrdad Seyf. Designer - Leslie Travers. Lighting Designer - Fleur Ansell. Music & Sound - Behzad Bolour. Dramaturgical Support - John Wright. Company - 30 Bird Productions (England). Cast - here . 2006 Tour Dates and Times - here . Seen to review at Edinburgh Traverse Theatre on 13 April 2006. Run Time - 1 hours 5mins no Interval. Reviewer - Thelma Good. Cutural shifts engagingly dramatised. Part way through seeing Majnoun I was struck how much it told me about humanity, the pull between cultures and the journey a nation can travel in a century. Far more than many equivalent Scottish plays, so many are set so rooted in the real by our Scottish playwrights and companies. So rooted we rarely feel how odd and unique our responses have been, as our nation separates from the larger one. One we have for a long time been umbilically joined to like a legless Siamese twin, a union which has confused our cultural ways. Director and playwright Mehrdad Seyf has been given a gift of a set by Leslie Traverse with its many surfaces, some see through with hatches and levels to play with and appear from. In a Middle Eastern society where traditionally men and women lived separately the set allows actors to perform with a degree of separation by screens or being above or below each other. The three physically engaging actors Daniel Alexander, Ali Amadi and Betsabeh Emran all give playful energy to the quirkily defined script where a society discovers its rulers expect it to shift away from tradition. Then later movements emerge to change the society back from Western ways to Islamic Fundamentalism. Through all the changes the human ability to survive comes through. Some of the script is in Farsi, you will get the gist or the scene will be repeated later in English. Westerners' impressions of the Middle Eastern nations in recent years has been alienating and sometimes grim. Seyf's play and production fuelled by humour, pace and the metaphorical use of the Hitchcock movie, Dial M for Murder has us responding with a surprised buoyancy to the shifting ways of the play as the society changes. Though from a different place and culture we can understand the struggle to surviving as culture changes. Ours has been gentler low risk cultural shifts but watching Majnoun reminds how our culture behaviour is shifting and sometimes by legal enforcement. This year no smoking in Scottish public places, with England and Wales likely to follow, in future decades will we be only able to be full Scottish citizens if we are all over healthy, communicate formally in Scots or dressed in particular clothing? © Thelma Good 13 April 2006 - Published on EdinburghGuide.com Cast - Daniel Alexander, Ali Amadi and Betsabeh Emran. 2006 Tour Details of 30 Birds Productions' production of Majnoun . Tour begins 12 - 15 April at 7:30pm Edinburgh Traverse Theatre 0131 228 1404. 18 - 22 April at 8pm London Lyric Hammersmith 08700 500 511. 3 May at 8pm Cambridge The Junction 01223 511 511. 5 May at 7:45pm Crawley The Hawth 01293 553 636. 9 May at 8pm Exeter Phoenix 01392 667 080. 12 May at 7:30pm Leicester Phoenix Arts 0116 255 4854. 25 May at 8pm Kendal Brewery Arts Centre 01539 725 133. 30 & 31 May at 7:45pm Birmingham Rep Theatre 0121 236 4455. Tour ends. Theatre Editor, Thelma Good's e-mail is thelma@edinburghguide.com Although every effort has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the information presented in these pages, no responsibility can be accepted for any errors or omissions. |
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