I suppose it’s normal, as one grows older, to be moved more easily, even by things that in one’s youth one might have dismissed as sentimental or tawdry. But perhaps sentimentality is in the eye of the beholder? L’artiste has proved to be a smash hit, in its third run at Hanager Theatre; the stars and the author-director, Mohamed Zaki, have appeared on various television shows including OnTV’s Ma’kom, hosted by the celebrity presenter Mona Shazli; and countless publications, from Al-Youm Al-Sabe’ to Al-Watan to Al-Sharq Al-Awsat to Independent Arabia, have given it rave reviews. In addition, its star, Heidi Abdel-Khalek, aside from widespread critical acclaim, won the Best Actress Award at the National Festival for Theatre for her portrayal of the late, great Zeinat Sidqi.
L’artiste is a fairly predictable drama, but what gives it power is its central thematic thread in addition to its subject-matter: the life story of Zeinat Sidqi, arguably the 20th century’s most famous comedienne and certainly one of its greatest box-office draws. Born on May 4, 1913, Sidqi had people flocking into cinemas from the 1940s to the late 1960s, making her movie debut as early as 1937 in Ba’d Al-Sitar (After the Curtain) and her final film Bint w’ismaha Mahmoud (A Girl Named Mahmoud) coming as late as 1975.
L’artiste is not a retrospective of Sidqi’s work: it does not present highlights from her career or a succession of her most popular monologues, now fast favourites with audiences young and old. That said, neither is L’artiste classifiable as a docudrama. Rather, it uses fictionalised scenes from Sidqi’s life to present the still-powerful, still-moving central conflict of Art vs Respectability, Bohemian vs Bourgeois, and pursuing your passion versus following in the footsteps of family. This seems to be a conflict that will never grow old: pre-1950 movies frequently featured the protagonist as an aspiring actor or musician whose family, or occasionally the family they want to marry into, outright rejects them because of their chosen profession. One would think that in 2025, the stigma attached to pursuing a life on stage has faded; but, as many young people whose parents forbid them from attending the Academy of Arts will tell you, the tradition is alive and well.
The play starts with a retired Zeinat Sidqi — affectionately known as “Auntie Zeinat” by the niece and nephew she is raising — being invited by then-president Anwar Al-Sadat to a soiree honouring the great artists of Egypt. This information is all factually accurate, as the real Zeinat did in fact raise her niece and nephew, and the event was the Arts Day of 1974. Her tizzy over not being able to find a frock to wear to such an occasion, having sold or pawned her many dresses, sparks the unfolding of the drama, throwing us into a trip down memory lane.
Immediately after the dress dilemma, we flash back to a much younger Zeinat trying to pursue her artistic career and being berated by her father while her younger brother Sayed (a strong performance by Ibrahim Al-Alfi) tries to stand up for her. In a pivotal scene, he tells his father, “she’s better than all of you!” At which point his father strikes him hard across the face. In a series of vignettes, we see her married off (a marriage which she subsequently escapes) and watch her dreaming of a future with her lifelong friend Khaireya (also recorded as having been her friend in real life) in which both actresses perform various scenes from classical drama and discuss the fact that once you catch the acting bug, you can never abandon it: that is what it means to be an artiste.
The artiste identity, that is to say the inability to abandon one’s true vocation, is paralleled by a secondary but thematically important character, Khawaga Vassily, Zeinat’s tailor, an expatriate from Europe who speaks broken Egyptian Arabic and passionately professes his commitment to his craft. He loses a great many customers because of his refusal to make home visits, which he sees as demeaning to an artist like himself. Still, he tells Zeinat, he can understand her attachment to her own vocation because he would never abandon his. Khawaga Vassily is played with intense charisma by veteran actor Ahmad Abdel-Halim, who also did a turn (in character) at mimicking classic comedian Ismail Yassin, which he performs spectacularly with extraordinary talent, to cheers and applause from the audience. His presence on stage with Heidi Abdel-Khalek is less a clash, and more a collaboration, of the Titans, and I would venture to say Abdel-Halim upstages Abdel-Khalek, although there is little need to choose between them.
Another character who walks part, or indeed all, of the way with Zeinat Sidqi is the artist’s best friend Khaireya, a real-life character frequently referred to in biographies of the superstar. She was an actress who struggled alongside Zeinat but never achieved her level of fame. Fatima Adel, who plays her, gives a solid performance and even does a turn at Greek drama. Her function serves to highlight the many artists who never make it, the unsung heroes who spend their whole life fighting and end “unknelled, uncoffined.” Khaireya survives into the present-day (1974) setting, when she tries to contribute a dress for the desperate and penniless Zeinat, who is now considering excusing herself and not going to Arts Day because she doesn’t have anything to wear.
The climax of the play comes with a visit from Zeinat’s disapproving brother Sayed, now much older, married with his children being raised by Zeinat, and completely absorbed into the fabric of conservative society, conforming to the ubiquitous bourgeois disapproval of Zeinat’s profession (played in his older years by Ihab Bekir, who does a wonderful turn as a pompous, self-important petty tyrant with verve that makes him a character we love to hate). Sayed has come to offer Zeinat a chance to come back into the fold by renouncing her art and becoming respectable, in addition to “giving back” his son and daughter, who are there of their own accord. She is passionately defended by her niece and nephew. Things are at an impasse until, in a parallel of the pivotal scene from earlier, Zeinat’s nephew Tarek responds to his father’s relentless baiting by saying the exact phrase his father said as a young man, “she’s better than all of you!” Whereupon his father strikes him hard across the face (a well-executed stunt: the slap rings out throughout the auditorium) and, in so doing, is thrown back into his own past and finally recalls the young man he was and how passionately he defended his sister before respectability got its claws into him.
Shocked by what has become of him, he apologises to Zeinat and escorts her himself to Arts Day. Secure in the esteem of her family, Zeinat goes in a smart blouse and skirt instead of an evening gown, having realised that her worth comes from who she is without needing expensive evening clothing. The final scene joins a special kind of set piece, increasingly common in today’s art in which a maligned and downtrodden real-life artist is given in fantasy-fiction the kind of esteem they were never granted in reality. (To see what I mean, go to YouTube and search for “Doctor Who- Van Gogh Scene”. Just do it, you can thank me later.) It is deeply satisfying on many levels to set the record straight and obtain emotional closure, not, of course, for the historical figure in question, but for us as fair-minded audience members who can see the towering achievement of the artist in question. It is this that brings L’artiste back full circle and contributes to the deep satisfaction that transcends its somewhat conventional presentation. Despite its conventionality, there is a kernel of truth at the core of L’artiste that breaks through occasional clunky additions (such as the romance between Tarek, Zeinat’s nephew, and Ward, Khaireya’s daughter, which the play would be greatly strengthened by cutting) and conventional set pieces, transcending them to touch a deeply personal chord of identity and passion stifled by conservative values.
This chord is supported by veteran Fady Fouquet’s set design, a simple quasi-realistic, versatile stage set that relies more on props and multiple-use openings (such as a curtained alcove that variously serves as a door, a traditional country house, and the atelier of Vassily, the fashion designer) and dominated, as critic Nahla Ihab intelligently observes, by an old-fashioned armoire centre stage that serves as the doorway to bygone days and the link between past and present with its old-fashioned craftsmanship, a physical, tangible representation of the inciting incident of the play and its central dilemma. It also serves as a magic box holding the many costumes into which the actors change, chameleon-like, throughout the play, as they effortlessly move between eras.
The play ends with a quotation from the real Zeinat Sidqi saying she hopes all families will allow their children to pursue their artistic dreams, and the finale is a recording of a comic song by Ismail Yassin: “Poor us, the artists; poor us!” (‘eini ‘aleina ahl al-fann ‘eini ‘aleina). This serves to bookend the performance along with an old recording of a comic song by Ismail Yassin with the voices of the real artists whose legacy gives life to this work and lends it a poignancy that survives. Last but not least, one would be remiss not to mention Ahmad Al-Gohari’s publicity photographs, programme and posters for the show, all meticulously designed to appear like the movie posters of yesteryear, granting the show a beautiful window into the past in keeping with its thematic thrust.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 28 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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