Jidariyya

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The Palestinian National Theatre has been described by its director as having “a very big name for a very small company”. And as the curtain falls on this adaptation of Mahmoud Darwish epic Jidariyya, it appears as if the production has been laden with too much extra-theatrical baggage for even a “big” company to move beyond. Darwish’s sudden death a week before its opening night transformed what was to be an exciting presentation by a young Middle Eastern company into a heavily weighted elegy. Again, as is the experience of so many Palestinian artists, the shadow of conflict looms so large that their work is politicised in ways often beyond their own control.

But such heightened expectations only serve to magnify the compositional flaws that hinder Jidariyya, rather than excuse them. To adapt any poem to the stage presents a company with acute demands. Darwish’s work however is particularly challenging, with a man waking up in a hospital bed to be confronted with his younger self who leads him through a flashing modernist dreamscape of fragments from his past.

Director Amir Nizar Zuabi’s use of movement has sections crackling with physical energy, and his set design and props are beautifully effective, but even a wonderful section where a field of corn is pulled on to the stage by a cloak is hindered by the stodgy and occasionally clunky English of the subtitles. This is a great shame, as the battle appears to have been over before the production began. While lush and occasionally arresting, Jidariyya’s potential to work as effective theatre is frustratingly lost in translation.