Syria holding elections as violence rages; Egyptian armed forces clashing with protesters in Cairo: these barely ink-dry headlines serve only to confirm how vital an insight into the Arab world this Play, Pie, Pint/National Theatre of Scotland mini-season of work is currently providing.
Last week, Moroccan playwright Jaouad Essounani took a satirical sideswipe at crude Western perceptions of the Middle East as revolving around sexual oppression, poverty, disenfranchisement, and desperation. Here, young Syrian playwright Abdullah Alkafri trains his eye on the Damascene middle classes, but to less engaging effect in this chin-stroking kitchen sink drama.
Ayman (a solid performance from Christopher Simon ) is a psychiatrist whose homosexual son has disappeared. With his world crumbling around him, and as his marriage turns into a battlefield of resentment and inertia, into in his life – and more importantly his practice – comes a patient he suspects may have been having a relationship with his son.
What follows in Philip Howard's atmospheric and beautifully lit production, is a triumph of style over substance. The show's slow burn pace promises depths it never realises. When you strip away all the Pinteresque pauses and narrative links between patient and doctor and husband and wife, what you're left with is essentially a gay-themed episode of Middle EastEnders.
The normally reliable Selina Boyack – as Ayman's wife Malak – tries her best to lift proceedings whenever she's on stage, but the part is underwritten and her talents wasted here. Likewise Alkafri's hints at middle-class dissatisfaction at the way Syrian society is developing never really catch fire.
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