Skip to main content

You Bury Me

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

Four stars

 

Revolution can be a sexy thing, especially if you’re a crazily hormonal youth on the verge of some very personal changes of your own. This is the case for the six young people coming of age in this new play by Ahlam, set in Cairo during the optimistic aftermath of Egypt’s Arab Spring in 2011, before their hopes are dashed four years later as oppressive forces move in.

 

Katie Posner’s production sees a vibrant young cast embody the mess of emotions that drive their assorted trysts by way of a series of criss-crossing narratives that personify the pulse of the big city some will be forced to leave behind forever.

 

All are exploring the growing pains of first love, be it Osman writing his way through his anger, Rafik exploring his sexuality, or Osman’s kid sister Maya and her classmate Lina doing likewise. Tamer and Alia, meanwhile, have an extra added religious divide to deal with.

 

While such shenanigans might sound like something out of glossy youth TV, with a title drawn from a Levantine Arabic phrase to express undying love, the stakes in Ahlam’s play are considerably higher.

 

Since winning the 2020 Women’s Prize for Playwriting, You Bury Me has been developed for this co-production, that sees the Royal Lyceum join forces with Paines Plough, The Women’s Prize for Playwriting, 45North and Orange Tree Theatre, with Bristol Old Vic on board as an associate.

 

As the cast’s Greek chorus style unity give way to charmingly played scenes of awkward courtship, Posner’s cast shine. Tarrick Benham makes for a fierce Osman, while Nezar Alderazi brings Rafik’s vulnerability to the fore. The goofy interplay between Yasemin Ozdemir’s Maya and Eleanor Nawal’s Lina is a joy to watch, as are Moe Bar-El’s Tamer and Hanna Khogali’s Alia. As life gets complicated for all, an adventure to uncertain futures begins.


The Herald, March 10th 2023

 

ends


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid
Post a Comment
Read more

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds
Post a Comment
Read more

Edinburgh Rocks – The Capital's Music Scene in the 1950s and Early 1960s

Edinburgh has always been a vintage city. Yet, for youngsters growing up in the shadow of World War Two as well as a pervading air of tight-lipped Calvinism, they were dreich times indeed. The founding of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 and the subsequent Fringe it spawned may have livened up the city for a couple of weeks in August as long as you were fans of theatre, opera and classical music, but the pubs still shut early, and on Sundays weren't open at all. But Edinburgh too has always had a flipside beyond such official channels, and, in a twitch-hipped expression of the sort of cultural duality Robert Louis Stevenson recognised in his novel, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a vibrant dance-hall scene grew up across the city. Audiences flocked to emporiums such as the Cavendish in Tollcross, the Eldorado in Leith, The Plaza in Morningside and, most glamorous of all due to its revolving stage, the Palais in Fountainbridge. Here the likes of Joe Loss and Ted Heath broug
2 comments
Read more