One of the sub-strands in this year’s “Artists Without Borders”
theatrical programme in the Edinburgh International Festival is work
from Iran. I have previously mentioned Abbas Kiarostami’s video
installation
Looking At Tazieh,
which placed reviewers in the surprising and revelatory situation of
watching (footage of) the audience much more than of the play which
they in turn are watching. That play is a ritual drama about the
martyrdom of the Imam Hussein in the first century of Islam. Now, the
same space in the Hub hosts a modern Iranian drama by Attila Pessyani
and his Bazi Theatre Company.
I say “modern”: we see a transistor radio and even an iPod, but to all
intents and purposes this is a timeless tale of women living on a
secluded island, mourning one death and apprehensive about another, or
at least a departure. The
dramatis
personae are led by the matriarch Bibi, with her two daughters
and her son’s widow. The social claustrophobia, the unforgiving
landscape, the talk of sea and sky (the “Devil’s ship” of the title is
a particular ill-omened moon) and of course the female community are
all reminiscent of Lorca: I intend no disrespect by calling this a kind
of
House Of Bernarda Allah,
with the women dressed in jilbab and masks rather than mourning black.
There are two other figures in the play. One is a mannequin of the dead
Ismael, which periodically sits up from its grave on the sand-covered
stage to reassert itself as a significant presence which informs Bibi’s
manner of existence. The other, I’m afraid, is a puzzle. A woman whose
mask is red as opposed to the black of the others’, who is seen in the
company of the daughter-in-law and to whom no other character reacts,
who builds what may be a miniature representation of the island and its
inhabitants in the sand downstage and whose long train swathes the
others when the night of the Devil’s ship is at its darkest and
threatens to carry someone else away. My best guess is that this is the
jinniof whom the
daughter-in-law asks to be exorcised by Bibi. But the character remains
even after the night is passed and her mini-effigy is erased. This is
an atmospheric piece of work, but without further exegesis it remains
an enigmatic one.
Written for the Financial
Times.