Jackie, here’s my review. I waited until now to write my full review on Kalila and Dimna because I didn’t want to spoil it for anyone who wanted to attend the play tonight.

It is a biographical story. There are five Acts in the play. Sulayman Al-Bassam takes us back to the Abbasid era. The play opens in Basra, Iraq. We see Ibn Muqaffa (a writer who presents opposing ideas in his work) at his home, having a conversation with a fellow friend who is hiding from the guards, and ironically later on is beheaded.

I was lost a bit because I didn’t expect to see a biography story of the writer himself to his dreadful fate. My mistake though I was chatting away with friends instead of reading the synopsis of the play. That’s why I didn’t get it. And I don’t have the priviledge of going to see the play again.

Anyways, I really liked the farce in the play, it reminds me so much of Shakespeare’s wittiness. I also liked how AlBassam cuts in and reads out parts of the dialogue of the original Arabic text. This is nothing new to me because I’ve seen this technique used by AlBassam in a play I attended years back.

I feel disappointed a bit because I really expected more in Part 1 of the play. I understood more of the play in Part 2, where the plot unfolds. But, I would’ve loved to see the battle between Abu Muslim’s army and the new Calipha’s army.

I loved the scene when Asia ‘the splendors of Asia’ drops to greet her husband’s corpse, who died disarmed in a schemed attack. One more thing I was hoping to see was better lighting effects because they were not so great. It shows that it wasn’t that professional.

All in all it was an excellent play. Sulayman Al-Bassam worked really hard to create the English version of this story. It’s not easy. The ideas presented are so innovative and creative in every way.

Enough about the play now. Yesterday, I met Jackie. It wasn’t so hard to spot her. She’s a such a sweet person. It was really nice to finally meet her.

Update: Click here to view AlBassam’s play.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 1st, 2006 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Theatre. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.