Les Sirènes de Baghdad

by Rosslyn Hyams

Article published on the 2008-07-14 Latest update 2008-07-15 08:10 TU

Les Sirènes de Baghdad at La Manufacture
(Credit: Arnaud Bouvier)

Comedies are the most popular shows in the Off Festival, the Avignon Theatre Festival’s fringe. But some actors and companies have the courage, and perhaps the backing, to use their dramatic skills and tackle current affairs, such as wars and culture clashes.

Les Sirènes de Baghdad or Sirens of Baghdad plays at 10.30 at night in the Avignon Off. The venue, La Manufacture, offers this slot to works in progress. In 2008, the space is occupied by a play which shows how barbaric treatment and injustice by invading human beings turn a man who’s been minding his own business his whole life into a monster obsessed with revenge.

The main character, the innocent human being, is played by Farid Bentoumi. He tells the character’s story to an attentive audience in a long monologue. He takes us to a village somewhere in Iraq, where American soldiers carrying machine guns are jumpy, and their suspicion and fear leads to them killing a frightened mentally-ill child and his father, who were on their way to a dispensary to get treatment for the boy. 

 In the version I saw, there’s no scenery as such, but some bowls of colour on the floor. A painter/actor dabs a picture on a white backcloth, or on a piece of plastic as the actors tell the story. She makes white footprints on the stage floor, and war paint on the main role’s body. The paint depicts the journey made by a character whose world, his values, his honour, collapses after seeing his father’s genitals - which are exposed when the old man is being manhandled by American soldiers.

The main character's despair leads him to quit his village and seek his own justice, while his cousin tries to dissuade him. Near the end of the play, the voices, or sirens, spiral upwards into a frenzy of fanatical brain-washing.

He goes off to the airport from which he never takes off. And the main character falls into silence. His silence is drowned in a song by popular local singer Fayrouze. Les Sirènes de Baghdad, the Sirens of Baghdad, a play based on the novel by Yasmina Khadra, already available in English translation, continues to evolve. Directed by René Chénaux, it will be performed at La Manufacture until 2nd August, in Avignon.