Stage-starved Beirut applauds

Press, 21 April 1986, Page 16

Stage-starved Beirut applauds

NZPA-Reuter Beirut Shrieks of mirth greet the tall, gangling figure prancing flamboyantly into the spotlight of a Beirut theatre, clad in English Elizabethan-style tights. Rolling his eyes and waggling a limp hand, the lovesick dupe Malvolio in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night" triggers wild giggling as he peruses a fake love letter he believes is from a high-born lady admirer.

The actor is Michael Burrell, a Briton touring theatre-starved Beirut and the northern city of Tripoli with a one-man show of excerpts from Shake-

speare. His performances were rapturously received by audiences and reviewers in Beirut, where a decade of civil war has snuffed out nightlife. But this has not quenched a thirst for drama, at least on the stage. Several playhouses engulfed in the fighting are bombed-out hulks and, apart from student drama, theatre is confined to occasional political satires in Christian east Beirut staged by troupes depleted by emigration. “Friends said I was nuts to come,” Burrell, an actor and playwright, told Reuters.

“The official in London who issued my travel papers called my trip ‘your suicide mission.’ In fact, things have gone pretty well.” People in Beirut agreed. “A refined performance,” wrote a critic, Abido Pasho, in the daily “As-Safir,” “Anger, entreaty, love, attachment, amorous rapture, reminiscence and oratory” were all conveyed by Burrell with “maturity and experience.”

Burrell, on his first visit to Lebanon, appeared unperturbed when mortar shells crashed into streets 2km from the theatre at

Beirut University College just before he was to go on stage.

"Foreigners are afraid to come, but enough security can be provided,” said a university drama teacher, Leila Debs. “Our message to foreign actors is please come — we need you desperately.” <

Burrell .said: “I love playing in problem places, the audiences respond so well. Beirut is just as I imagined — bullet holes everywhere, lots of rubble, but teeming with life . . . this morning I was wakened by gunfire.” Burrell, who has acted in 35 countries and put on

one-man shows in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, is the first British dramatic artist to visit Beirut since the mimic, Nola Rae, in 1983.

“In some countries I have to be very careful about the politics of what I act,” he said.

His one-man show of “Twelfth Night,” “King Lear” and "Richard II" provided numerous pointed reflections on rulers, including Lear’s violent tirade against “the great image of authority: a dog’s obeyed in office.” " ‘Richard ll’ and ‘King Lear’ both deal with countries tearing themselves apart. That’s obviously pertinent here,” he said.

Burrell spent hours between performances in coaching sessions with drama students he found “very responsive.” He said he began to notice the difference between Lebanese students and those of other nations he had coached when he asked Beirut students to perform an exercise in which they had to face a wall and utter any sound they wanted. “Every single one of them made sounds of war, terror and aggression — and I’m sure it was unconsciously done,” he said.