Christopher Walker reviews You Bury Me at The Orange Tree Theatre

Sometimes the theatre reminds us of the real meaning of freedom.

You Bury Me is written by a playwright under an alias ‘Ahlam’, no doubt fearing the retribution she would suffer in her own country.

Ahlam won The Women’s Prize for Playwriting, but this is still a brave piece. Well done The Orange Tree Theatre!

It is an homage to Cairo the city she has had to flee.

“A city of exhaust fumes, drunken phone calls, first kisses, hysteria, sweat and laughter.” But, it mainly concerns a generation coming of age after the failed revolution in Egypt, the ill-fated ‘Arab Spring.’

After a bumpy beginning, three pairs of characters are played remarkably well by gifted actors, from an underrepresented ethnic group in London theatre.

Alia (Hannah Khogali) and Tamer (Moe Bar-El) must hide their secret love from their families, indeed from everyone.

Their teenage love story will be familiar to just about all of us, but not the extreme lengths which social oppression leads them to.

Moe Bar-El is very funny to watch as he copes with the frustration.

We meet two schoolgirls, Lina (Eleanor Newall) and her rebellious friend, Maya (Yasemin Ozdemir).

Yasemin is compelling watching, and totally believable. I do hope we will see more of her.

The more serious pair of characters are struggling political journalist Osman (Tarrick Benham) and his dreamer gay friend Rafik, the wonderful Nezar Alderazi.

All of these characters are instantly recognisable, and in many ways their story could be the story of any group of youngsters growing up. Though their fates are peculiarly rooted in the violence of the Middle East.

The politics of the revolution are not seriously explored here. Is it political or social oppression? Would an Iranian-style theocracy have been even worse than the military regime?

What we do have is a group of teenagers naively determined to live and love freely, who were brutally oppressed or ‘disappeared.’ Butterflies broken on the wheel.

Ahlam says “it still makes me proud to have written this for my younger self. I think she deserves it.”

https://orangetreetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/you-bury-me/book

 

Picture: Eleanor Nawal as Lina, Yasemin Özdemir as Maya. Photos credit:  Pamela Raith.