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    ‘Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’’ Review: A Bittersweet Premiere

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    An Arabic production of Wajdi Mouawad’s 1991 work, planned to open in Lebanon, was canceled because of his perceived ties to Israel. It found a home in France.What happens when the roots you long for keep eluding you? This question has long been central to the work of the playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad, and never more so than in a new production of his 1991 work “Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’.”Currently the director of Théâtre National de la Colline, a high-profile Parisian playhouse, Mouawad was born in Lebanon. In 1978, he fled the country’s civil war with his family, at the age of 10. As a writer, he has returned to his Lebanese heritage over and over — and this year, he went back to the country to stage his first production with local actors, an Arabic-language adaptation of “Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’.”But in April, just weeks before the premiere, Le Monnot playhouse in Beirut was forced to cancel all performances of the play over Mouawad’s perceived ties to Israel, which Lebanon considers an enemy state. Several Lebanese lobbying groups had called for the show to be stopped, with one, the Commission of Detainees Affairs, filing a legal complaint with the country’s military courts and demanding Mouawad’s arrest.According to a report in the French newspaper Le Monde, Mouawad was accused of allowing the Israeli Embassy in France to pay for three plane tickets in 2017 to bring two Israeli actors and a translator to the country for his production “All Birds.” In another perceived transgression, last season Mouawad programmed a work by the Israeli artist Amos Gitai at the Théâtre National de la Colline.Mouawad quickly left Lebanon. In a public statement, the Beirut venue blamed “unacceptable pressure and serious threats made against Le Monnot as well as some artists and technicians.”It was an astonishing turn of events for a playwright who has always asserted his Lebanese identity, regardless of his childhood exile, and dissected it onstage. In the end, in lieu of Beirut, “Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’” premiered over the weekend at the Printemps des Comédiens, a theater festival in Montpellier, France, ahead of an international tour (whose dates remain to be confirmed) with the cast that was scheduled to perform in Lebanon.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      The Egyptian Rapper Wegz Wants to Take Arabic Hip-Hop Worldwide

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      The 25-year-old has become a streaming star without releasing a full album. He just wrapped his first shows in the United States, and hopes to take his music even further.On the ninth stop of his first world tour, the Egyptian rapper Wegz finished soundcheck at the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C. and relaxed on a worn black leather couch wearing a gray Carhartt fleece jacket and cream New Balance 990 sneakers. In his unflashy attire, passers-by might not have recognized one of the biggest artists in the emerging Arabic music scene calmly awaiting his set time.“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Wegz, 25, said. “Just revert people back to minimalism.”His numbers, however, have been growing. Wegz has been the most-streamed artist on Spotify in Egypt since 2020. In 2022, he was named the most-streamed artist on the platform across the entire Middle East and North Africa, and became the first Egyptian artist to perform at the FIFA World Cup final. He sold out concerts in London and Berlin before arriving in the United States last month as the first Arab artist with a global tour backed by the concert giant Live Nation.“He has been one of the pioneers who have taken Egyptian rap to a different place,” Salam Kmeid, head of content marketing at the regional music platform Anghami, said in a video call from Dubai. (Wegz’s track “El Bakht” is now the most streamed song of all time on the service.) “As an Arabic hip-hop movement, he has taken it to a different scale.”In the middle of his current tour — after the European leg had wrapped up but before his first dates in North America — the war between Israel and Hamas began. Wegz, who has been outspoken in support of Palestinians, has made it clear that he has no intent of soft-pedaling his views as he works to reach a broader global audience. He recently posted a video on Instagram of a pro-Palestinian rally in New York City, and announced that a portion of the proceeds from his tour will go to relief efforts in Gaza.“I will raise awareness about the cause along the way and condemn the dehumanizing and killing of Palestinians,” Wegz said in an interview. “I’m hoping to try to heal from all the horrific images I’ve seen in order to start seeing a better life so we can sing and dance and get back to enjoying what we do.”His rise has coincided with a wave of attention and appreciation for Arabic music. The Palestinian-Algerian rapper Saint Levant’s “Very Few Friends” and the Palestinian-American Lana Lubany’s “The Snake” both went viral on TikTok. On television, shows like Hulu’s “Ramy,” Netflix’s “Mo” and Disney+’s “Moon Knight” heavily feature Arabic music in thoughtful ways.“I think there’s a lot of talented people around the globe,” Wegz said, speaking in English. “I might be very talented as well.”Wegz performing at the FIFA World Cup final in 2022. He was the first Egyptian artist to take the stage at the event.Fareed Kotb/Anadolu Agency, via Getty ImagesSince his debut single “Batalo Fake” (Arabic for “No Longer Fake”) arrived in 2017, with an appearance from his fellow Egyptian M.C. Hesham Raptor, Wegz has been praised for his lyrics, which exude self-confidence while exploring themes around identity and the socioeconomic reality for youth in Egypt’s urban neighborhoods. While hip-hop with trap beats remains his foundation, his tracks also dabble in dancier production and Afropop. His most successful song to date, the uncharacteristically vulnerable “El Bakht” (“The Luck”), features a melodic rap about a brokenhearted lover over a syncopated beat, strings and plucked acoustic guitar.Despite his strong streaming numbers, Wegz still hasn’t released a full album, though he insists he’s working on one that he plans to put out after his tour. He attributes his success as a singles artist to being a lifelong student of his craft — a voracious listener nerding out about global music cultures.“I see myself as someone who’s here to show people things they might not have known about because my passion is the research of things, basically,” he said. “I want to know how you guys started this. I just keep digging and digging.”Born Ahmed Ali and raised in the coastal Egyptian city Alexandria, Wegz grew up in a modest area with his father, a math teacher, and his mother, a nurse and head of a children’s foster home. He has six siblings — some from different marriages — and last year told the Emirati entrepreneur and interviewer Anas Bukhash that he moved frequently as a child but made new friends fast. He added that he had been eager to take risks when his family urged caution (though his mother encouraged him to explore, which expanded his worldview).He developed a love of books at an early age, and wrote short stories and poems. His first exposure to music came from being surrounded by religious anthems, but as a teenager he branched out on his own, seeking secular music.“I tried to go online and go to internet cafes and listen to YouTube,” he recalled in the basement of the Washington venue. Wegz has said he grew up listening to American rappers including Young Thug, Future and the duo Mobb Deep, as well as the Egyptian singers Ahmed Adaweyah, Dalida, and Mohamed Mounir, and the Algerian musician Cheb Mami.His taste is eclectic, he pointed out, noting that he has “had a phase of every type of music in my life at least once.” (His current passion? Yemeni music, which emphasizes narratives: Even if an artist is “just staring at the tree, there’s a song for it where you can actually tell us how you feel about this tree and how you feel about being outside today.”)After some attempts at writing music, Wegz recorded his first song at 17 to have something private he could “share on his phone” with a handful of his friends. Working in a studio for the first time “was amazing,” he said. “It was what I wanted.”Just a few years later, he was getting attention in Egypt with “T.N.T.”, a haunting track produced by fellow Alexandrian rapper L5VAV that blends heavy trap percussion with Egyptian mahraganat, a style that combines low-fi, minimalist synths and edgy, heavy bass. (“I’m a big boss shaking up this great hall/I go heavy on that beat like I’m Rick Ross,” Wegz boasts in the song.) In 2020, “Dorak Gai” (“Your Time Is Coming”) — an aggressive but subtle diss track produced by the powerhouse Egyptian musician Molotof — put Wegz on the map throughout the Middle East and North Africa.Wegz gave credit to L5VAV, a frequent collaborator who appears on their hit “Khod w Hat” (“Take and Give”), for helping him hone his lyrical skills and navigate his early rise. “He helped me take music seriously,” Wegz said, with affection. “It was very motivating being around such an inspiring character.”Now he’s set his sights on reaching listeners beyond the Arabic-speaking world while still emphasizing genuine Arabic sounds and rhythms in ways that push the culture forward. “If the global eye is on you right now,” he said, there’s an opportunity to spotlight “the old things that we always had.”Kmeid, of the streaming service Anghami, said Wegz plays a vital role in Arabic music, and beyond. “He is actually the voice of his generation,” she said. “We do see how the Egyptian scene specifically sees Wegz as that young artist who came out of whatever background or history he had, a very simple person who really believed in his dream.”Wegz has plans to expand his brand beyond music, looking toward designing merchandise and a career in acting. Arabs have a rich history as traders, he explained, and that’s something he’s always kept in mind.“For now, I’m making music because I really love it and I have fun doing it,” he said.“People have fun listening to it, and I’m making money out of it. This is amazing.”“Overall,” he added, “I hope to always use my voice for good as long as I live.” More

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      in Theater

      An Arabic Adaptation of ‘Chicago’ Razzle Dazzles Lebanon

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      Reimagining the Broadway musical for audiences near Beirut meant new character names, choreography and lyrics.As the orchestra began vamping for roughly a thousand festivalgoers at a 19th-century palace in a mountainous town in Lebanon, Selma Fehmi — the Velma Kelly character in a new Arabic version of the musical “Chicago” — started to croon lyrics to the tune of “All That Jazz.”But this reimagining of the show’s opening song quickly provided a Lebanese twist: “Hurry, pick me up and let’s take a drive/to a small place hidden in the center of Beirut.”The Arabic adaptation of “Chicago,” the longest-running show currently on Broadway, debuted at the Casino du Liban in May with a sold-out run that extended to five nights. The team returned with three performances in August at an art festival in Beiteddine, a town some 20 miles southeast of Beirut — where this adaptation takes place — and now hopes to take the show abroad, within the Middle East and beyond.Despite dealing with American cultural references and wildly different syntax, translating the musical into Arabic came pretty smoothly, said Roy ElKhouri, the writer, choreographer and director of the adaptation. The context particularly speaks to present-day Beirut, said Anthony Adonis, who adapted the lyrics.“It’s like it was written to be a commentary on the judicial system in Lebanon,” Adonis said, referring to the mismanagement and corruption that spurred the nation’s economic crisis and an investigation into the 2020 port explosion in the capital that has been muddied by obstruction and interference.In addition to an acting role, Roy ElKhouri wrote, choreographed and directed the adaptation.Chicago the MusicalThat ability for a show set in 1920s Chicago to speak to modern affairs in the Middle East was attractive to ElKhouri. “You can relate to it in every aspect,” he said, pointing to its universal themes of corruption, media manipulation and the power of showbiz.Barry Weissler, who produced the 1996 Broadway revival alongside his wife, Fran, was not surprised that artists in Lebanon were revisiting the story. “Everyone gets it,” Weissler said. “It doesn’t matter which language it’s in — the reaction’s still the same.”Yet even with the commonalities, reinterpreting the musical was a complicated process because of the strict guidelines that accompany licenses from Concord Theatricals. The Arabic version had to stay true to the original story line. Characters could not be added nor removed, and neither could songs. And the Lebanese team was required to give the adaptation entirely new choreography — originally by Bob Fosse — and direction.Once those parameters were laid out, ElKhouri’s team got to work.The first step was coming up with relevant Arabic names for characters, including Selma (Mirva Kadi), whose name rhymed with Velma. Roxie Hart, whose killing of her lover sets the story in motion, became Nancy Nar (Cynthya Karam), alluding to the Lebanese pop star Nancy Ajram.Other changes involved wordplay: The smooth-talking lawyer Billy Flynn, who frees murderers from prison, became Wael Horr (ElKhouri), his last name meaning “free.” Roxie’s loyal husband, Amos, became Amin (Fouad Yammine, who helped adapt the script), which means “faithful.” And the sympathetic journalist Mary Sunshine became Nour El Shams (Matteo El Khodr), whose full name translates to “the light of the sun.”Translating the songs was a bigger challenge. The legal and showbiz jargon of “Razzle Dazzle” — “Shubeik Lubeik” in Arabic (“Your Wish Is My Command”) — were especially tricky. Adonis wrote at least three versions until the team settled on the one that most aligned with the music. “It was like doing very, very complicated math,” he said.The team that adapted the musical did not shy away from its sensuality, whether it was the wide-open legs in the dance numbers or the revealing costumes.Chicago the MusicalThe Arabic version had to stay true to the original story line, but entirely new choreography — originally by Bob Fosse — was required.Chicago the MusicalLebanese references were trickled throughout the musical. In “Cell Block Tango,” or “Kan Yistahal” (“He Deserved It”), the prisoners’ dialects reflected the country’s diversity. The character of Hunyak, who is Hungarian in the original, became Armenian, a reference to Lebanon’s Armenian population.Though the country is considered one of the most liberal in the Arab world, many pockets of society lean conservative. But the team did not shy away from the musical’s sensuality, whether it was the wide-open legs in the dance numbers or the revealing costumes and suggestive squeals.ElKhouri did have other fears, though, primarily that “Chicago” would not find an audience in the country. The sold-out shows proved otherwise.“You rarely see this in Lebanon — this level of performance,” said Yahya Fares, a nurse who watched the first performance at the festival. His girlfriend, Maribelle Zouein, was also impressed.“They incorporated Lebanon’s culture,” she said. “They made it relatable.”Both Fares and Zouein lamented that Lebanese theater, and art in general, is growing more difficult to produce despite its cultural reputation in the region.In the mid-1800s, Maroun Naccache introduced Western-style theater to Lebanon by adapting European plays into Arabic musicals, said Aliya Khalidi, the founder of the Foundation for Arab Dramatic Arts. After the arrival of the Baalbeck International Festival in 1956, theater flourished. And even during Lebanon’s civil war, from 1975 to 1990, the composers and playwrights known as the Rahbani brothers, the singer Fairuz and her son Ziad produced musicals and plays that remain cultural mainstays.The past few years have delivered a setback because of the coronavirus pandemic, the financial meltdown and the port explosion, Khalidi said. “Usually, in times of crisis, the most affected medium is the theater,” she said.In the past year, more and more modest productions have begun to pop up in Lebanon, Khalidi and ElKhouri said. But the “Chicago” adaptation stood out for its scale, even though financial constraints meant the cast and crew had only two months to rehearse before the debut. Some actors and dancers had to keep their day jobs.“We’ve done this out of pocket,” Nayla El Khoury, the producer of the show, said. “Imagine what they can do if they had the proper resources and the proper support from the country.”Adonis said the adaptation was a statement in and of itself: No matter what the country endures, culturally, “Lebanon’s still on the map.” More