Post by couldileaveyou on Mar 27, 2019 21:43:44 GMT
I saw it tonight and didn't think much of it. It's ambitious in the way it wants to explore love across cultural differences and radicalization, but it's a mediocre study of both. When it veers on the sentimental it's repetitive, when it turns on the intellectual it has the sophistication and depth of thought of a first year undergrad seminar. Also, in which world a student of literature knows of Maugham but has never heard of "Robinson Crusoe"? Marc Antolin is very very good and he's easily the highlight of the production, even if he plays a supremely annoying character. I liked the scenes between him and Karren Winchester as the visa lady of the embassy: they weren't necessarily coherent, but they brought a fun Orwellian vibe that disappeared somewhere for whatever reason. Personally, I thought that the huge flaw of this play - apart from some bad writing - is that it doesn't come from a place of deep understanding of Egyptian culture, politics or society, and its representation seems romanticized and flattened at once. The last 15 minutes of the play turns on the interesting topic of how radicalization works, but it's cut short: with a running time of 80 minutes, the play could have been expanded a little (or trimmed something at the beginning) to explore further this theme, but instead with spend too much time with a character that despite his best intention really smells of white savior.
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