May 14, 2012

THE STAGE Reviews - Brighton Festival 'A World I Loved'

This was an exemplary festival event. First, it provided an enjoyable mix of star glamour (Vanessa Redgrave, its guest director) and local talent (the young Brighton Festival Choir). Secondly, it reached beyond the delights of wildly partying Brighton, combining words by a Lebanese teacher and uplifting bursts of classical music: as well as the choir, a trio (piano, violin and cello) played Handel, Bach and Beethoven. And finally, it was a fund-raiser with enough emotional impact to make people reach willingly for their wallets.

 

Mariam C Said, widow of the Palestinian-American intellectual, Edward, and daughter of memoirist Wadad Makdisi Cortas, introduced her mother's account of the life of an educated Lebanese woman. Born in 1909, head of a Beirut girls' school for 40 years, she died just as her country entered yet another period of upheaval in 1979. Her words were read by silver-haired Redgrave, svelte in black and white, actor Nadim Sawalha and Najla Said, actor-grand-daughter of Cortas.

 

The convoluted history of the region - local wars, changing borders, the establishment of Israel, British and French colonialism, the impact of two World Wars - was relieved by more personal anecdotes and evocative on-screen family photographs. As a young woman travelling to Baghdad, Cortas saw fires flicker in the desert as the extraction of oil began.

 

Cultural mixing (Cortas' husband was a Quaker) and the education of women are again problematic in the area. Money raised for the mixed Arab-Jewish West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (represented by two young musicians on Saturday), established by Edward Said and Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim, aims to change attitudes for the better.

 

Review by Heather Neill

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