'You Bury Me' at the Orange Tree Theatre

'You Bury Me'

"The cast is generally terrific."

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre. Get directions.

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PAMELA RAITH

Ahlam’s exciting “love letter to Cairo, to Egypt, to the revolution and everyone who fought for it,” which jointly won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Playwriting and has been developed with Paines Plough company, vibrantly captures the flavour of life in Egypt in the aftermath of the bittersweet Arab Spring over a decade ago, as viewed through the prism of six young people coming of age under an authoritarian regime. 

On Sara Perks’ stark stage, with graffitied blocks hanging overhead and the smoky atmosphere of Cairo well conjured, the six-strong cast begins exuberantly in the fashion of a Greek chorus.

Their focus soon expands to encompass individual stories as we see them all grappling with a fusion of the personal and political as they navigate life- and love- after the revolution, finding a city that confounds their expectations yet enchants their souls, conceding “only Cairo will push you to your absolute limits.”  

Originally conceived as a play revolving around “the absurdity of being in love in a police state,” the author says that initially, in 2015, there was a compulsion to ‘tell the world, the UK - where I was living at the time - about what was happening in Egypt.”

Over time Ahlam found this evolved into something broader and richer, paying testament to all those who’d protested in Tahrir Square in 2011 and often found their hopes painfully thwarted.

And so we meet Osman, an impassioned but reckless journalist determined to expose corruption, his gay friend Rafik, half-sister Maya, her friend Lina and the star-crossed lovers Alia and Tamer, whose persuasive romance is one of the play’s highlights.

Moe Bar-El and Hanna Khogali make a really endearing couple, their furtive fumblings and whispered hopes conducted covertly with much humour and poignancy as one is Coptic Christian, the other Muslim.

Sometimes the play’s broad canvas makes things ramble just a little too much. Still, the cast is generally terrific, convincingly portraying exactly what it’s like to grow up with a teenage/twenty-something’s hopes and dreams seeking expression amidst a repressive regime: desire, laughter and fear all intermingling daily.

The unusual title is apparently a reference to an Arabic expression of love, literally the hope that the speaker may die before their beloved so as not to suffer. 

With an almost visceral feeling of being plunged into the world of Ahlam’s contemporary Cairo, director Katie Posner has created a truly engaging, often funny and always thought-provoking production, offering a tantalising glimpse of an unfamiliar culture for a British audience.