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.”
اضافة اعلان
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 Al-Khouri, 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.
That ability for a show set in 1920s Chicago to speak to
modern affairs in the Middle East was attractive to Khouri. “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, Khouri’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 (Khouri), 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 Al-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.
Lebanese 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.
Khouri 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 Khouri 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.”
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