If 2020s nostalgia married the enthusiastic youth workshops of the early 1990s and they had a baby, the result would be very much like Ibn el-Geel. Adapted from the bestselling books Shaklaha Bazet and Made in Egypt by the well-known journalist Omar Taher, the former of which was a collection of short, delightfully mordant and funny articles on things from the everyday life of Egyptian people, such as why we like our mother’s molokhiya but not the same dish in a restaurant, while the latter constituted a wonderful historical overview of quintessentially Egyptian brands such as Corona Chocolate and Nasr Automobiles. Both books are in the rich tradition of such authors as Gamal Amer (Whatever Happened to the Egyptians?), Ahmad Ragab (1/2 a Word), George Mikes (How To Be A Brit), and so on, and present a journalistic, bite-size, life-size portrait of why life in our particular corner of space-time is what it is.

Ibn el-Geel vividly engendered my nostalgia as it reminded me of a lot of the workshopped, minimal-resources, low- to no-budget plays of the early 1990s that used comic, short sketches to point up or underscore a particular political issue or even present a workshopped version of some classical text. Khaled Galal, Tarek Said, Mansour Mohamed, Tarek Dewairi, Khaled Al-Sawi, and numerous others were masters of the genre, and the rampant youth and enthusiasm of this performance are definitely reminiscent of those times. Back in the early 1990s, in the heady days just after the launch of the Experimental Festival, a number of organisations – notably the Hanager Theatre but even foreign cultural centres, in a role that has somewhat dwindled nowadays – were extremely active in hosting foreign theatre-makers to give workshops to Egyptian theatre professionals. The Hanager Theatre famously hosted modern dance pioneer Eva-Maria Lerchenberg-Thony, who held a workshop for young dancers; the British Council hosted the legendary British director Max Stafford-Clark, then artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre, to do a workshop on acting open to all theatre practitioners; American director Laura Farabough, who was going to give a workshop at Hanager but ended up giving it to the Warsha company instead; Laurence Rondoni, who offered a modern dance workshop; and many more.

The reason that Ibn el-Geel is so reminiscent of those richly-peopled heady days is that the play has very similar roots to those long-ago workshop outcomes: actor-turned-theatre-producer Ashraf Abdel-Baki is a name I have recently mentioned more than once on these pages. In fact, in my 2024 roundup I wrote of him, “Actor and producer Ashraf Abdel-Baki is today performing the role that former director of the Hanager Theatre Huda Wasfi used to play throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, namely offering a venue and some sponsorship to independent and amateur theatres not affiliated with any government organisation.

“Abdel-Baki started out with Masrah Masr (2014-2019), a now-defunct project to produce and record commercial comedies, which nevertheless founded a wonderful workshop that offered serious actor training for young theatre makers… a massive side benefit of the workshops for young people not only that the graduates of this programme worked as rising stars in television and cinema and in Abdel-Baki’s Succès project… Abdel-Baki experienced firsthand the struggles and sufferings of this generation seeking a chance for exposure. This led him to found Succès, which gives youth, amateur, nonprofit and independent theatre companies a chance to perform on his Rihani Theatre in Emadeddin Street, and publicises them through Ticketsmarche and other avenues that result in excellent exposure and audience turnout, in addition to 25 per cent of the box-office going to the company.”

The actors in Ibn el-Geel are the Alexandrian graduates of one of Abdel-Baki’s workshops and it shows, with the twenty-something cast filling the stage with fire. The show definitely has the joyous feel of a student production, but is professionally handled and fast-paced. Written and directed by Ahmed Askar, it was originally presented with older actors, which makes more sense since Ibn el-Geel is literally translated as “Son of the Generation”, referring to the generation born in 1980 at the latest, the last of the generations that had only three television channels, no Internet, played outside in the street, and experienced many other rites of passage that will remain unfathomable to (some segment of) millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and all the other newer generations. The immediate feeling one has while these actors are on the stage is “What are these kids doing, talking about that period?” because they are clearly all born in the 2000s. Still, they do it convincingly and it is understandable that repeat performances of a certain show cannot always employ actors in the same demographic.

The show lightheartedly takes us through Gen X life milestones from early childhood, parental expectations, eating habits, fast food, landmark movies and TV shows, smoking cigarettes, smoking weed, burgeoning sexual desire, and much more, all the way up to the very brink of matrimony. All the actors are wearing basic black, with red suspenders for a pop of colour which is very welcome, and they bring their A-game, with every subtle facial expression absolutely on point even when the spotlight is on someone else. Each actor slips seamlessly into a variety of roles as the scene requires, now playing a parent, now a child, now a teacher, now a salesperson, with the aid of minimal costumes – a scarf to denote an older woman, a jacket to denote a man of a certain social class or age – and very limited props (a ball, a stick, a packet of cigarettes). The scenes are almost all comic in orientation, with very astute use of posters projected on a cyclorama to represent popular movies, TV shows, street food stalls, etc., related to the scenes the actors are representing.

This style of play is very much in the tradition of Mohamed Gabr’s 1980 On, and the signature style of Khaled Galal in such shows as Ayamna al-Helwa, Qahwa Sada, and Haga Tekhawwef. Even Fabrica’s recent I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change follows this dramatic formula. The formula in question, and the formula of Ibn el-Geel, is a group of differing scenes loosely connected by a single thematic and vaguely chronological thread to end up with a conclusion or an overview about some social issue. A great many of the scenes are laugh-out-loud funny and the show is crafted with comic timing almost worthy of slapstick. Some of the jokes are homophobic and fatphobic, which honestly doesn’t surprise me as this, too, is part of our Gen X culture, at least in this country. The presence of a narrator is welcome in tying the scenes together and conferring coherence on a type of show that by its very essence risks being disjointed. Ibn el-Geel’s real strength, though, is the acting, and it is largely through the scintillating and unflagging enthusiasm of the young actors that the show manages to captivate throughout its pushing-it 90 minutes.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 9 January, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly