Theatre review: Before the Revolution, Summerhall, Edinburgh

A couple robed in white stand barefooted in a white bed of nails.

Before the Revolution, Summerhall (Venue 26)

Before the Revolution, Summerhall, Edinburgh * * * *

Unmoving, almost unflinching they narrate episodes of Egypt before the revolution in Arabic, with the English translation scrolling behind. Domestic scenes - the forced seduction of a serving girl by her master, a marriage dripping with bitter scorn - mingle with television soap opera, assassinations, terror attacks, transport disasters, torture, the names of Egyptian dead, religious sermons. In the end, as so often, social frustration finds an outlet in sardonic humour.

Before the Revolution is as much a work of visual and sound art as theatre and needs to be approached that way. Work from the Middle East is thinner on the ground this year in Edinburgh. This production written and directed by Ahmed El Attar, is an ambitious piece that puts disjointed snapshots from the 1990s and 2000s together to create an atmosphere of stifling oppression and depression, dysfunction and corruption. It is performed by Syria’a Nanda Mohammad and the Egyptian-trained Ramsi Lehner.

A scratchy, hammering sound track is by Hassan Khan, one of the Middle East’s most gifted composers and artists and an exceptional writer, who won the Silver Lion in Venice two years ago with a garden installation, Composition for a Public Park. That’s a work that deserves an Edinburgh showing.

Until August 25

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