Silly Little Country

Useless Review of 'The Arab-Israeli Cookbook' in Toronto

The uselessness derives from the apparent fact that the remaining run of the play is sold out. So I cannot sell any more tickets. But that is GREAT for the people putting the show on.

In a way. It is also unfortunate that my word of mouth cannot get anyone more to attend. The premiss seemed unpromising to me - a distillation of discussions with many inhabitants of Israel and Palestine, talking about their lives, and built around food preparation. And yet it largely worked for me. You can see a quick summary here and here and here.

A small cast played several different roles, and shifted among them quite well. I found myself drawn into all their lives, occasionally irritated by a character, occasionally seduced. I think this reflects the success of the production, allowing the characters to speak for themselves. Some of the descriptions of the events of the last few years certainly did not correspond to what I had gleaned from my readings on the subject, but again, this was the characters expressing their experience, not an historian balancing different reports.

The hardest thing to achieve in this is a more or less reasonable balance. By sticking mostly to people who really just want to get on with their jobs and their daily lives, the play centred nicely on maintaining such a balance.

I do thank my alma mater's Alumni office for the idea of asking us alumni to experience this in such a pleasant way.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 12:55 AM