On stage at the Sunflower Theater (Masrah Douwar el Shams), Fouad Yammine moves from the anecdotal to the dramatic. (Credit: Carla Henoud)
When L'Orient-Le Jour profiled Fouad Yammine a year ago, he confided that his "favorite place was the theater,” he said. "On stage, you can't cheat. Things are shown in their truth. It's the most honest art form, the most transparent and the closest to me, which tries, in a world dominated by pretence, to remain as sincere as possible."
Fouad Yammine, a born hakawati (storyteller) who takes his audience to scenes and landscapes of yesterday and today. (Credit: Charbel Sammour)
In "Hayne el 3ayshe hek" ("Life is easy this way"), currently on at the Sunflower Theater (Masrah Douwar el Shams), his words resonate with a new and personal echo. He wrote his latest play alone and is performing solo. It was born of a troubling inner necessity.
We might as well say it straight away: The author, director and actor — who, until now, has been more accustomed to duets with actress Serena Chami (his partner in life and on stage) — this time delivers his vision of the origins of evil. "The worst does not come from the devil who acts openly, but from the devil who hides under the clothes of an angel," he tells his main character.
Stories lived, gleaned, fantasized...
Everything begins in his play — as it often does in life — with a joyous insouciance. It's that of a gathering of elders from a village in the Lebanese mountains, from which Fouad Yammine hails and which he portrays with a consummate art of psychological portraiture.
The setting is a chair and a small piece of furniture with a television on it. The born hakawati (storyteller) takes his audience into a narrative so vivid that it instantly transforms his words into images: In scents, in sounds, in landscapes of yesterday and today.
As we follow the tribulations of the truculent Abouna Émile (Father Émile), the terrible Mamère Ilda (Mother Superior), Romanos the muleteer and the talkative Adele, we follow the joys, the small pleasures, the comical triumphs and the inevitable disenchantments of this picturesque band of villagers.
A performance that begins and ends with The Beatles tunes. (Credit: Carla Henoud)
Sober lighting and a soundtrack drawn exclusively from The Beatles' repertoire (to whom Yammine devotes a veritable cult following) complete the set design, creating a hushed, intimate atmosphere on stage at the Sunflower, conducive to confidence or confession.
In the second half of his show, the "storyteller of stories lived, gleaned, passed on or fantasized" goes against The Beatles' famous refrain in Strawberry Fields: "Living is easy with eyes closed." How? By facing up to the facts of life with a clear conscience.
Funny, raw, courageous and sensitive
From the setbacks of his village elders, the actor moves on to his own childhood memories. His misadventures as a young boarding school dunce, his first emotions aroused by a prickly brunette, the genesis of his desire to become an actor: It's a succession of hilarious sketches that he unfolds with an assumed self-mockery, even though some of them refer to customs, beliefs and difficult situations.
Yammine remains in the anecdotal register until, slowly but surely, the tone changes. Then comes the hardest moment in "Hayne el 3ayshe hek": When the story, through a chilling description — a heartbreaking interpretation — of implacable predation, tips over into tragedy. Then it slides, irremediably, towards the denunciation of "these men who, under their angel's clothing, are among the devils, the worst of the devils."
A deliberate tangle of fictional and real-life stories, "Hayne el 3ayshe hek" is a performance by an actor-storyteller whose message is as funny as it is painful, as tender as it is provocative, as delirious as it is brutally true.
An hour and 15 minutes of emotion with no downtime, the play's intensity is matched only by the subtle humanity and intelligence with which Yammine questions the construction of a life and the complexity of souls.
Those familiar with the work of this prodigiously sensitive playwright know the acuity of his vision of human destiny's tragedy: On the harshness of existence, faced with valor by those who choose not to live it with their eyes closed, as the four Liverpool boys sing.
While he courageously castigates the predators — masked and everywhere, even where we least expect them —, he acknowledges that "art doesn't provide solutions. It only helps us identify where we are on the path of human evolution." Without revealing more, this is a show that gets to the heart of the matter and is not to be missed.
"Hayne el 3ayshe hek" by Fouad Yammine will be showing until Sept. 22 at the Sunflower Theater (Masrah Douwar el Shams), Tayyouneh roundabout, at 8:30 p.m. Tickets on sale at Antoine Ticketing.
This article was originally published in L'Orient-Le Jour; English version edited by Yara Malka.
