The Lazours—Arab-American brothers Daniel and Patrick, a bookwriting-composing-lyricist team—have created We Live in Cairo, a keen-eyed look at revolution, revolutionaries, and revolutionaries post-revolution. Their result, despite some less than flawless elements, is brilliant.
The revolution they’ve chosen to represent is the 2011 overthrowing of Hosni Mubarak, who’d held onto unwavering power in Egypt for 30 years. Beginning shortly before the actual outbreak, the Lazours, with forcible director Taibi Magar, bring on two women and four men. They’ve formed a revolutionary block with no connection to the prominent Muslim Brotherhood, too often regarded as a terrorist group.
The most revolutionary of the six activists, the most flexibly committed to the cause is Fadwa (Rotana Tarabzouni). Throughout, she dictates the group’s joint action. Her closest ally is Layla (Nadina Hassan), who’s prepared until she isn’t to follow Fadwa’s bidding unblinkingly. Layla’s linking is further supported by her very much returned love for Amir (Ali Louis Bourzgui, only recently playing The Who’s Tommy on Broadway), a musician and songwriter who provides songs that, according to We Live in Cairo, quickly become revolution standards.
Amir’s brother Hany (Michael Khalid Karadsheh), outsider Hassan (Drew Elhamalawy), and Karim (John El-Jor), a visual artist and Fadwa’s cousin, lend their strengths to a contingent that in action adds up to the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. By the way, Karim enters wearing an outsized version of Mubarak’s head (Raphael Mishler the puppet designer), a funny fillip in a political work that comfortably mingles activism, love story, and satire.
When the anti-Mubarak protest begins in Tahrir Square (as the world was extremely aware) and David Bengali’s projections begin flashing angrily on the walls of Tilly Grimes’ appropriately shabby set, the six link or don’t link arms, depending on the safety behavior order of the Tahrir Square day—Amir leading them in outraged song. As the protest continues and their revolutionary actions appear to be failing, Fadwa agitatedly presses them up. Especially fueling their outrage is the circulated photograph of a tortured fellow protester. When unrelentingly they reach their goal on day 18, act one ends.
The celebratory conclusion suggests that the We Live in Cairo second act has nowhere more meaningful to go: The valiant troupe triumphed and can rest on its laurels. Not so fast. That’s when the Lazours cleverly raise the stakes to an unexpected and praiseworthy height.
Apparently understanding that through history—possibly excepting the American Revolution—the outcome of revolutions is often a subsequent revolution. At the very least, what’s revealed is how fragile the bond between once ardent revolutionaries can be.
Fadwa and companions almost instantly start to distance themselves from each other. It’s not simply that they’re loyal to differing political factions. It’s more that they’re now six individuals who coalesced for a time under dire circumstances and now, having temporarily repressed their individuality to win an historically crucial fight, are once again their essential selves.
So, for instance, when Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood is elected president democratically, the incensed Fadwa, not a Morsi sympathizer, insists that their activism isn’t finished and, more than that, her inflexible attitude towards her leadership mustn’t be doubted. Hany seems to disagree, claiming that the group’s democratic goal has been realized and that their task is done. Layla and Amir become estranged because she remains loyal to Fadwa’s leadership rather than her romance, whereas he’s increasingly less convinced of their continuing purpose. His reluctance is even affecting his abilities to write anything new. Hassan, having applied to Columbia Journalism School and been accepted, leaves for New York City. Too quickly he’s brought back when Amir runs into life-threatening trouble.
That the group’s cohesion, which also includes differences over religious backgrounds (Christian Coptic and Muslim), is so dramatically depicted through act-two scenes that the completed Lazours manuscript is practically a personalized dissertation on the highly complex nature of revolutions. More to the contemporary point they include allusions to things like Facebook and Twitter.
The Lazours songs run from touching—a love song for Layla and Amir, both showing off beautiful voices—to satirical—Karim sings “The Benevolent Regime of King Farouk II”—to some numbers so mundane they sound as if Daniel and Patrick simply purloined dialog passages to drape over melody. (Mona Seyed Bolorforosh presides over the gritty upstage seven-strong band.) We Live in Cairo is replete with rousing choreography and movement direction by Ann Yee.
As insightfully disturbing as We Live in Cairo reportedly was when first produced at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge in 2019, it might be even more painfully disturbing when considered as a preview of coming attractions were the United States to become an authoritarian country any time soon. Is this on the Lazours’ minds? It would be difficult to believe it isn’t, more’s the worry.
We Live in Cairo opened October 27, 2024, at New York Theatre Workshop and runs through November 24. Tickets and information: nytw.org
