01/12/2021
Told By My Mother - Ali Chahrour, Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, Lisbon, 24 Nov 2021
A review by James Barnard
I have a lot of questions about this performance, many of which probably don’t have simple answers. Perhaps the most troubling question for me is one of gender. Told By My Mother is ostensibly a celebration of women in general and the strong, loving and brave women in the family of the choreographer, Ali Chahrour in particular. Indeed the title leaves us in no doubt about the focus of this performance.
The two central performers are the two women in the cast, and the other four male performers carry themselves with an air of deep reverence throughout - towards the women on stage, the women in the story, and women generally. The story being told is the failed search of a mother (the choreographer’s aunt) for her missing son, so although absent from stage, the protagonist is also a women. The strength, courage and love of this mother is both keenly felt and communicated by the whole cast and is no doubt something worth celebrating.
But a niggling question started to take form, and by the end of the show I could no longer ignore it. Would this noble, brave, loving search for a missing child have happened if that child was a daughter, rather than a son? It’s not controversial to say that sons are prized above daughters not just in Lebanon, but throughout that region and indeed the Arab world. My discomfort came, I think, from the accidental irony of celebrating the courage of a woman who might not have taken those risks for a daughter.
Perhaps equally troubling is that the identity and value of the mother is seen exclusively in relation to her son - a man. By the end of the performance we know nothing about her beyond her devotion to her son, as she is given no defining characteristics beyond that. This of course reflects a wider cultural norm of women being defined by their relations to men - wife, mother, daughter.
I came into this performance absolutely primed to enjoy it. Three days beforehand I had taken part in a workshop with the choreographer, in which he had described the difficulties making the piece in Beirut and shared some of his creative process. The tragedy of the story of his aunt searching for her missing son is of course compelling, but what also struck me was the absurdity of political and cultural life in Lebanon, and the gallows-humour that Ali used to cope with life there generally, and particularly the rich absurdity of trying to produce a dance show in a country with a collapsing infrastructure. This twisted tension between the seriousness of the subject matter and the absurdity of trying to make a dance show about it in Beirut was clearly expressed by a wicked glint in Ali’s eye when he spoke about it and I’d felt it was a rich vein to exploit in the show. However, quite soon into the performance I realized there was to be no kind of humour at all, the atmosphere on stage never straying beyond serious and reverent. The consequence of this was sadly not only the monotony of atmosphere created, but also a very narrow dynamic range. With very rare exceptions, all time-based art depends on the good use of dynamic range to remain engaging for more than a few minutes. Whether ignoring this as a concern was intentional or the result of deference to the pervasive solemnity was unclear, but the consequence was a show that barely changed in tone or dynamic throughout it’s 80 minutes.
The performances of the two women, in particular their singing, had a strength and authenticity that the rest of the show was built around. The live music might have helped add dynamic range, but actually did the opposite, often flattening the dynamics of the text it accompanied. The continual use of a distortion pedal and digital delay on the traditional stringed instrument created a drone texture with a haunting quality that was rarely used effectively. That left all the rhythmic heavy-lifting for the hand-percussion, the importance of its role seemingly unappreciated and undeveloped.
The last uncomfortable question I have is about the audience reaction - a standing ovation. But just the one call-back. Why did the audience stand to applaud? Some shows use a crescendo to build towards the end and pull the public from their chairs with a clever transfer of momentum. This was certainly not one of those shows. One factor that often plays a role was in this case central to the standing ovation for Told By My Mother - the audience were primarily applauding themselves and each other. The setting was key - the most important theatre in Lisbon, and vitally, a full auditorium. The ovation was a mutual celebration of being the cultural elite. The subtext of the performance plays nicely into that, a celebration of older women in the Arab world is a perfect narrative to pin your woke credentials to. When an audience really love a show, they keep clapping, calling the performers back to the stage many times. Jumping up to clap for 30 seconds was the mutual validation of Lisbon's woke cultural elite, clapping themselves and each other for coming out on a Thursday night, paid parking and all.
I think Ali only made half of this show. The other half was the absurdity and humour of trying to make the show itself, importantly dropping the solemn reverence for periods to let the work breathe. You might argue that a show about making itself is an overused trope, but in this case it would be absolutely justified.
I feel there is a great Dance Theatre piece in the telling of Ali’s aunt’s story, with song, by her family - but this wasn’t it.
