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Latest items? Unedited? Fringe Report Uncut
Alia Alzougbi - Spoken Word
Verdict: Entrancing
London - October Gallery - Wednesday 5 July 06 - 13:15 (13:30)
Alia Alzougbi tells a story from the Middle East. It's a one-woman performance, running at 15 minutes. The story is told in English spoken word, movement and Arabic song.
A beautiful woman comes into the life of a lonely man. They marry, she leaves, he seeks her. Will he find her, and happiness?
Actress Alia Alzougbi brings her elegant charisma to the performance. Her costume works subtly with her performance - flowing gracefully with her dance moves, apt for the songs she sings which evoke Palestine and the Middle East. She wears a white t-shirt and dark blue denim bodice waistcoat, pretty full-length purple silk patterned skirt, metal disc belt, shoulder-length brown curly hair, bare feet. The dances are slow and sensual.
It's mainly spoken word, needing the courtesy of audience silence to avoid distraction. Only for 15 minutes - but some fail to manage this. A woman in the audience ploughs heavily into her lunch carton with knife and fork. She sits cross-legged on a divan at the back wearing grey culottes and needle-stripe matelot top, pounding and crunching her food. A real masticator.
Rain interupts the performance at a critical point of the story. Audience and narrator have to move inside the venue, carrying and re-erecting wooden chairs with them. There's a cue for more distraction as a man with a camera case seated in the audience noisily unpeels a lycra strap. A generously curved man in a kaftan finds every squeaking board in the venue's timber floor as he leaves during the performance.
Alia Alzougbi picks up the story and continues the romantic tale. There are workers in the fields, a crow disinclined to talk, a belly dancer. There's a dream-base to the story, which her fluidity in movement brings to life. Her face, classically beautiful, with large dark eyes, is a storyteller's face - absorbing, entrancing.
Credits: Writer & Performer - Alia Alzougbi. Part of Salaam Music Village - 2006 (28 June - 14 July) - A Celebration of Arts and Culture from the Islamic World. Producer - Cultural Co-Operation (http://www.culturalco-operation.org/).
END
John Park
reviewed Wednesday 5 July 06 / October Gallery
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012
www.fringereport.com
