Lebanon

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares179 Views

    An Arabic Adaptation of ‘Chicago’ Razzle Dazzles Lebanon

    by

    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

    More stories

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Barbie’ Debuts in Saudi Arabia, Sparking Delight, and Anger

      by

      Denounced in some Middle Eastern countries for undermining traditional gender norms, the hit movie is finding an audience in Saudi Arabia, illustrating the region’s shifting political landscape.On Friday night, Mohammed al-Sayed donned a pale pink shirt and denim overalls to join a friend at a movie theater in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, where the men settled in to watch a film about a doll on a mission to dismantle the patriarchy.Similar scenes played out across the conservative Islamic kingdom last weekend, as women painted their nails pink, tied pink bows in their hair and draped pink floor-length abayas over their shoulders for the regional debut of the movie, “Barbie.” While critics across the Middle East have called for the film to be banned for undermining traditional gender norms, many Saudis ignored them.They watched as the movie imagined a matriarchal society of Barbie dolls where men are eye candy. They laughed when a male character asked, “I’m a man with no power; does that make me a woman?” They snapped their fingers in delight as a mother delivered a monologue about the strictures of stereotypical femininity. Then, they emerged from the darkened theaters to contemplate what it all meant.“The message is that you are enough — whatever you are,” said Mr. al-Sayed, 21, echoing the Ken doll’s revelation.“We saw ourselves,” said Mr. al-Sayed’s friend, Nawaf al-Dossary, 20, wearing a matching pink shirt.Watching Barbie’s search for identity and meaning, Mr. al-Sayed said he was reminded of the fraught period when he started college and wasn’t sure of his place in the world. He said he believed that the movie had important lessons for men as well as women.“I felt like my mom should see the film,” he said.“All of our families — all families,” Mr. al-Dossary said, laughing.That this was happening in Saudi Arabia — one of the most male-dominated countries in the world — was mind-boggling to many in the Middle East. When “Barbie” opened on Thursday in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, it arrived suddenly and overwhelmingly. Moviegoers rushed to prepare Barbie-pink outfits. Some theaters scheduled more than 15 showings a day.Moviegoers wore pink during a screening of “Barbie” in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Thursday.Ali Haider/EPA, via ShutterstockA snide headline in the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat declared that Saudi cinemas had become “havens for Gulf citizens escaping from harsh restrictions” — a twist in a country whose people once had to drive to Bahrain to watch movies.Eight years ago, there were no movie theaters in the Saudi kingdom, let alone any showing films about patriarchy. Women were barred from driving. The religious police roamed the streets, enforcing gender segregation and shouting at women to cover up from head to toe in black.Since he rose to power, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 37, has done away with many of those restrictions while simultaneously increasing political repression, imprisoning conservative religious clerics, leftist activists, critical businessmen and members of his own family.Even now, despite sweeping social changes, Saudi Arabia remains a state built around patriarchy. By law, the kingdom’s ruler must be a male member of the royal family, and while several women have ascended to high-ranking positions, all of Prince Mohammed’s cabinet members and closest advisers are men. Saudi women may be pouring into the work force and traveling to outer space, but they still need approval from a male guardian to marry. And gay and transgender Saudis face deep-seated discrimination, and sometimes arrest.So as word spread through the kingdom that “Barbie” would debut on a delayed schedule — a sign that government censors were most likely deliberating over it — many Saudis thought the movie would be banned, or at least heavily censored. Bolstering their expectations was the fact that neighboring Kuwait banned the film last week.Lebanon’s culture minister, Muhammad Al-Murtada, also called for the film to be banned, saying that it violated local values by “promoting homosexuality” and “raising doubts about the necessity of marriage and building a family.” It is unclear if the government will follow his recommendation.Even in Arab nations that have allowed the film to be shown, it has faced intense criticism. The Bahraini preacher Hassan al-Husseini shared a video with one million Instagram followers calling the movie a Trojan horse for “corrupt agendas.”Even while Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has done away with many social restrictions in Saudi Arabia, he has increased political repression.Pool photo by Ludovic MarinAnd in Saudi Arabia, not everyone is receptive to the film. To the entrepreneur Wafa Alrushaid, who suggested that the film be banned in her country, its messages are a “distortion of feminism.”“I’m a liberal person who has called for freedom for 30 years, so this isn’t about customs and traditions, but the values of humanity and reason,” she told The New York Times. The film, she argued, excessively victimizes women and vilifies men, and she objected to the fact that a transgender actress had played one of the Barbies.“This film is a conspiracy against families and the world’s children,” Ms. Alrushaid, 48, declared.Many Arab critics of the movie expressed views similar to those of some American politicians and right-wing figures who have castigated the film as anti-male. The tussle in the Middle East over the movie illustrates how battles that sometimes echo the so-called U.S. culture wars are playing out on a different landscape.The animated film “Lightyear,” which showed two female characters kissing, was banned in several countries in the region last year. And six Gulf Arab countries issued an unusual statement last year demanding that Netflix remove content that violates “Islamic and societal values and principles,” threatening to take legal action.In Kuwait, religious conservatives have become more vocal in recent years, Gulf analysts say, broadcasting views that many Saudis would be hesitant to express in public now, fearing repercussions from the government.“Banning the movie ‘Barbie’ fits into a larger tilt to the right that’s increasingly felt in Kuwait,” said Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Kuwait University. “Islamist and conservative forces in Kuwait are relishing in these culture wars to prove their ascendancy.”Some Kuwaitis expressed astonishment that they would have to travel to the Saudi kingdom to watch the movie. Many pointed out the irony that Kuwait and Lebanon, despite objecting to the film, had long provided greater freedom of expression than many other Arab countries.Streaming out of movie theaters in Riyadh, people who watched “Barbie” seemed to leave with their own understanding.Lining up for “Barbie” in Dubai. Many Arab critics of the movie have expressed views similar to those of some American right-wing figures who have castigated the film as anti-male.Ali Haider/EPA, via ShutterstockYara Mohammed, 26, said that she had enjoyed the movie, dismissing the Kuwaiti ban as “drama.”“Even if kids saw it, it’s so normal,” she said.To Abrar Saad, 28, the message was simply that “the world doesn’t work without Ken or Barbie; they need to complete each other.”But to teenage girls like Aljohara and Ghada — who were accompanied by an adult and asked to be identified only by their first names because of their ages — the film felt deeper.“The idea was pretty realistic,” said Aljohara, 14, wearing a hot pink shirt underneath her black abaya. She said she liked that the film ended with a type of equality between men and women.“But it wasn’t nice that it ended with equality,” interjected Ghada, 16. “Because I feel like equality is a little bit wrong; I feel like it’s better for there to be equity because there are things a boy can’t do but you can do them.”Asked if they ever thought they would watch such a movie in Saudi Arabia, both exclaimed, with laughter: “No!”“I was expecting them to censor a lot of scenes,” Ghada said.In fact, it did not appear censors had cut anything major. A scene in which Barbie declares that she has no vagina and Ken no penis remained, as well as a scene with the transgender actress. The Arabic subtitles were rendered faithfully — including the word patriarchy.Hwaida Saad More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Sirens’ Review: The Risk in Rocking Out in Beirut

      by

      A documentary about an all-female metal group in Lebanon shows the difficulties of asserting complex identities in a repressive environment.“Sirens,” a documentary by Rita Baghdadi about Slaves to Sirens, an all-female metal group out of Beirut, Lebanon, opens in 2019 with the band united and happy — they’ve been invited by a record label to play a small stage at Glastonbury Festival in England. And while they wind up playing to a handful of people, the band gives its all.Slaves to Sirens is a five-piece, and its neon-haired singer, Maya Khairallah, nails the monster voice that’s so common in contemporary metal. But the movie’s focus is on the band’s two guitarists and main composers, Shery Bechara and Lilas Mayassi. Baghdadi (“My Country No More”) shows how difficult it is to assert their identities in a repressive environment.When the band returns home to Beirut, an environment in constant turmoil — one where they’re barely tolerated, if noticed at all — tensions emerge.Nobody in the band is getting any younger. Lilas still lives with her mother. She has to enact childish subterfuges when her Syrian girlfriend comes to visit to hide the true nature of her relationship. Shery, bristling at Lilas’s bossiness (and perhaps still hurt because the two were once romantically involved), quits.With few other choices, Lilas and Shery find their way back to each other, at least creatively. The ending, in which the reunited Sirens play before an enthusiastic crowd, is heart-tugging and rousing, even for non-metal heads.SirensNot rated. In Arabic and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 19 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      'Arab Divas' at the Arab World Institute: Singers Who Took Center Stage

      by

      A multimedia exhibition in Paris offers a rich flashback to a period between the 1920s and the 1970s when many female performers took center stage.PARIS — The diva sings of love and unmitigated lust. Dressed in a scarlet evening gown with her hair pulled high, she cries out to her beloved, longs for a night of undying passion and yearns for the sun not to rise.The vocalist in the 1969 concert video is Umm Kulthum: the Arab world’s greatest 20th-century performer, possibly the best-known Egyptian woman since Cleopatra and the star of the exhibition “Divas” at the Institut du Monde Arabe, or Arab World Institute, in Paris. The show, which runs through Sept. 26, is a richly illustrated flashback to the period between the 1920s and the 1970s. It portrays unveiled and openly voluptuous women performing on stage and screen without fear of censorship or religious condemnation, and feminists, political activists and pioneering impresarios facing down the patriarchy.Costumes worn by the Lebanese singer Sabah in the 1970s, on display at the Arab World Institute.Alice SidoliBesides costumes and jewelry, passports and posters, album covers and high-heeled shoes, visitors get to watch footage of female performers wiggling their hips in mesmerizing moves and posing on the beach in hot pants. The overall picture contrasts sharply with present-day Western perceptions of the Arab world as a place where women are veiled from top to toe and silenced by all-powerful men.“The exhibition knocks down a fair number of clichés and preconceived ideas about this part of the world. Women actually occupied center stage, embodied modernity and were not at all absent from history,” said Élodie Bouffard, the exhibition’s co-curator. “They sang, acted, made people cry, broke hearts and showed off their bodies just as Western actresses did at the time.”“These images are still very present in the minds of younger generations,” she added. “They don’t just represent the past.”The institute’s president, Jack Lang, who was France’s culture minister in the 1980s and early 1990s, recalled in an interview that when he was a boy visiting Cairo, he sneaked into a theater where Umm Kulthum was performing, and was “stunned, absolutely breathtaken.” He later heard another singer, Fayrouz (the exhibition’s other major diva), while touring in Lebanon as a young actor, he said, then gave her a medal as culture minister in 1988.A poster from the 1968 movie “Bint El-Hares” (“The Guard’s Daughter”), which starred Fayrouz, center. The poster is included in the Paris show.Abboudi Bou JawdeThese women were not just exceptional vocalists, Lang noted: Some participated in their country’s struggle for independence from the colonial powers, Britain and France, and joined in a wave of nationalism that swept across the Arab world. “The emergence of these divas coincided more or less with a time of collective emancipation,” Lang explained. “The music sung by them is an extraordinary expression of freedom.”The exhibition opens in pre-World War II Cairo, the artistic and intellectual hub of the Arab world, where concert halls and cabarets proliferated, many of them established by women, the exhibition co-curator Hanna Boghanim said. Women also had a significant role in the film industry, she added, working as “directors, producers, actresses, costume makers, talent scouts.”Many of these women came from very humble backgrounds, including Umm Kulthum, who is introduced in a velvet-curtained enclosure in the show. Born in a village in the Nile Delta, she first performed disguised as a boy, singing religious songs that bewitched the crowds. Eventually, she came into her own, as a woman and as a voice, and became famous for her improvisational style. Her songs sometimes went on for more than an hour.Her story is told through photographs, album and magazine covers, videos, and bright-colored costumes created for the 2017 biopic “Looking for Umm Kulthum,” directed by the Iranian-born artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat.An installation at the Arab World Institute featuring stills and video from Shirin Neshat’s 2017 biopic “Looking for Umm Kulthum.” Alice SidoliThere are no loans from the Umm Kulthum museum in Cairo, the curators said; they were too complicated and expensive to organize. Nor are there loans from Fayrouz, who is still alive, despite requests made via the family and entourage of the reclusive vocalist. Her section contains posters, album and magazine covers, photographs and other paraphernalia, some compiled by a dedicated fan.By contrast, the section on the half-Algerian, half-Lebanese diva Warda is full of her personal possessions: sunglasses, medals, earrings, passports, an oud instrument, a brown leather suitcase and an Agatha Christie crime novel. Born in the Paris suburbs, Warda made her debut as a child in her father’s cabaret in the city’s Latin Quarter and became a successful recording artist before moving to Algeria in 1962, the year the country gained independence from France. There, she married an army officer who stopped her from singing. Her career took off when she moved to Egypt a decade later.The exhibition gets racier as it goes along, culminating with the last wave of 20th-century Arab divas, including the Egyptian-born Dalida, who became a superstar in France. Interspersed among displays of sequined evening gowns, stilettos and powder compacts are video monitors that show a woman singing from a hot tub and rows of others lifting their legs in skimpy outfits worthy of the Folies Bergère.In the decades since, the place of female performers in Arab countries has changed. Islamist movements and migration from rural areas have made parts of society more conservative about women’s dress and public behavior. That has led to assumptions in the West that Arab women are veiled and constrained today, as opposed to the decades when the divas reigned. The Egyptian-born performer Dalida in Giza in 1959. She became a superstar in France.D.R. Orlando ProductionsTo Coline Houssais, the author of “Music of the Arab World: An Anthology of 100 Artists,” these then-versus-now perceptions, which the exhibition risked encouraging, were misguided.“There are two visions of the Arab world,” she said in an interview. “One is: ‘They’re barbarians, they’re Islamists.’ The other is: ‘Everything used to be so good before. It was a golden age.’”“The Arab world’s development is measured using ultra-Western criteria, such as whether women smoke or not, or whether they wear short skirts,” she said. There were “more important factors, to do with equality: the number of women who work, women’s civil rights,” she added.Despite the coronavirus epidemic, the show is a hit with Parisian museumgoers, and visitors to the exhibition appeared to validate Houssais’s assessment. On a recent afternoon, onlookers seemed intrigued by the story of these stars of yesterday, who bucked contemporary stereotypes about Muslim women in France.“It’s really very interesting to find out about the emancipation of women in these societies and to see the contrast with today, even in terms of hairstyles,” said Camille Hurel, 23, a visitor to the show. “These were strong personalities who were known all around the world.”“Nowadays, I have the feeling that there isn’t as much freedom of expression,” she added.Randa Mirza and Waël Kodeih’s installation, “The Last Dance” (2020), featured in the Paris show, brings together the two D.J.s with vintage footage, converted to a hologram.Thierry RambaudHoussais said that, in fact, the Arab world today was mostly populated with people under 30, a generation “glued to social media, completely open to the world, and leading their own private revolutions against their families and their communities.”The notions of family, community and religion were fading, and these societies were in the middle of a major “recomposition,” she noted.“There are still 1,000 places in the Arab world where you can wear a bikini, snort coke and listen to American music,” she added. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Elias Rahbani, Lebanese Composer Who Sought New Sounds, Dies at 82

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationTimelineWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve lostElias Rahbani, Lebanese Composer Who Sought New Sounds, Dies at 82He was one of Lebanon’s most prolific composers, writing music for divas, TV ads, movies and underground bands. He died of Covid-19.Elias Rahbani during a concert in 2000. He was one of Lebanon’s most prolific and beloved composers, fusing traditional Arab music with Western popular genres, including psychedelic rock and R&B.Credit…Joseph Barrak/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJan. 25, 2021, 4:31 p.m. ETOn Friday evenings before the coronavirus came to Beirut, a pulsing crowd of partygoers would stomp on the roof of a warehouse overlooking the port dancing to music at once retro and fresh. Its beat was unstoppable, its sound a mix of lush Arab diva melody, French 1960s pop and disco.The musical blend required no modern adaptation by a D.J. It was simply another Elias Rahbani experiment.From the 1960s through the ’80s, Mr. Rahbani, a Lebanese composer and lyricist who died of Covid-19 on Jan. 4 at 82, wrote instant classics for the Arab world’s most idolized singers, commercial jingles, political anthems, film soundtracks and music for underground and experimental Arab artists.The Rahbani sound was ubiquitous. Many Lebanese remember the jingles he wrote for Picon cheese or Rayovac batteries, or the love themes he composed for popular TV shows and movies like “Habibati” (“My Beloved One”) from 1974. His style changed often: he was among the first composers to combine Western electric instruments with traditional Arab ones and fuse Western genres — prog rock, funk, R&B — with traditional Lebanese dabke folk dance music.“His music is engraved in the memory of all Lebanese,” said Ernesto Chahoud, a Lebanese D.J. who helps run Beirut Groove Collective, which hosted the warehouse parties. “He did great Arabic music, great Lebanese music, and at the same time he was doing all of these Western styles. That’s why it’s timeless. That’s why a lot of people today want to listen to his music.”He was never the face of the songs, not like the celebrities he wrote for, including Fayrouz, the legendary Lebanese singer with the swooning voice, or Sabah, the film and music star with the golden hair. Still, along with his older brothers, Mansour and Assi Rahbani — the musical duo known as the Rahbani Brothers — Elias Rahbani was beloved across Lebanon’s political, religious and class divides.Yet he had ambitions that transcended tiny Lebanon’s borders. One of his sons, Ghassan, said Mr. Rahbani had nearly signed a contract in 1976 with a French company that would have given him a wider audience and perhaps greater control over the rights to his music; it would also have meant a move to France. At the last minute, however, he was overtaken by a rush of fondness for his country and decided not to sign.The Coronavirus Outbreak More