Richard III

Theatre performance Richard III by Sulayman Al-Bassam at Holland Festival 2008.
It was in response to a commission from the Royal Shakespeare Company that Kuwaiti writer and director Sulayman Al-Bassam created this highly celebrated modern Arabic version of Shakespeare’s tragedy of power. In it, he reimagines Richard’s all consuming struggle for power in the modern Arab world, a world of tribal links, family struggles and absolute power. Shakespeare’s text is uprooted from the mediaeval Christian world, reworked and transplanted into the scorching oil-rich Islamic world of the Gulf today. Performed in Arabic by a leading team of actors from across the Arab world, the production is accompanied by a live sound track, with the chanties of pearl divers sounding alongside modern sampled sounds, live African melodies and music from the desert areas of the Arabian peninsula. A compelling experience.