Review: You Bury Me, Bristol Old Vic – ‘An exhilarating, vibrant and life-affirming paean to the young people of Cairo’

Ahlam’s You Bury Me, produced by Paines Plough – the co-winner of the inaugural Women’s Prize for Playwriting in 2020 – is now mid-way through a nine day run at Bristol Old Vic. And what an exhilarating, vibrant and life-affirming achievement it is.

Described by the author – who retains her anonymity by using a pseudonym – the play is a love letter to Cairo: the city, and its people.

We follow six young individuals, all in their unique ways fighting for social, sexual and cultural freedom in the post-Arab Spring era.

Four years on from the revolution in Tahrir Square, this is Cairo in 2015, and once more, Egypt finds itself under a military regime, where people are “disappeared” for their resistance.

Eleanor Nawal as Lina and Yasemin Özdemir as Maya in You Bury Me

Suffused variously with anger, violence and fear, hope, love and joy, the interlocking stories of Alia, Tamer, Lina, Maya, Osman and Rafik manage to capture fragments of the many layers for which Cairo is repeatedly characterised.

Around them, Cairo itself steps into the role of occasional narrator, as the stage directions dictate: “The city narrates, explains, confuses, comforts, challenges, shares its stories”.

Moe Bar-El as Tamer and Hanna Khogali as Alia

Under Katie Posner’s accomplished direction, with stylish movement from Annie-Lunnette Deakin Foster, composition and sound from Kareem Samara and Adam P McCready respectively, and lighting from Aideen Malone, the city comes alive on stage; it is a raucous, living, breathing entity, intoxicating, and irrepressible.

Like the young people coming of age in their home city, this is an awakening, and one that will deservedly linger in the minds of anyone that sees this production; many whom – and I count myself amongst this number – do not know enough about what happened in Cairo in 2011, and its aftermath.

Nezar Alderazi as Rafik and Tarrick Benham as Osman

“We have to mention this because it’s been a long time,” the city tells us.

“And you might not know.

Or maybe you forgot.

That’s what’s scary.

That we will all forget.”

Full company, You Bury Me

Ahlam’s dialogue fizzes with the promise of young hearts standing at the precipice, daring themselves to embrace the power and exhilaration of sexual liberation, despite the terrifying vulnerability they must first confront.

It’s brimming with the humour and awkwardness of first love, nascent friendship and that road towards an honesty of self-expression that coalesces with inward feeling.

Full Company, You Bury Me

The ensemble cast is uniformly compelling; their chemistry energizing. There is acres of space within the play for us to connect with and care for the generation of young people it so clearly exalts.

And while we are reminded both of the power and futility of words (from Osman’s journalism of dissent, to Nina Simone’s Freedom, and even Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut), in the end it’s sheer force of emotion that one hopes will overpower the city limits, and cut through to all of our hearts and minds.

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You Bury Me is at Bristol Old Vic on February 24-March 4 at 7.30pm, with additional 2.30pm matinee shows on March 2 and 4. Tickets are available at www.bristololdvic.org.uk.

All photos: Pamela Raith

Read more: Setting the stage for Ahlam’s award-winning ‘You Bury Me’

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