They Deceived You — The Play of the Season

This year the Lebanese Women's League did not confine its attention to humanitarian social works, or to building projects, but went beyond them into the field of art. Through its efforts, the cultured elite of Beirut was able to see the play "They Deceived You," by the great playwright and stage director Mr. Farid Medawar, on the stage of West Hall at the American University. It was performed four times in the space of a single week, under the patronage of His Excellency the President and his honorable wife, and the unanimity of appreciation and admiration for it reached a pitch seldom attained by anything in this country before.

I am not here to review the play afresh, after the greater part of the lovers of this art have seen it, and after the newspapers have spoken of it with the utmost praise. But I must say that this play carried the elements of success before it ever reached the stage. That is because Mr. Medawar was able to depict a scene drawn from the very heart of our social life, exposing the evils of feudalism, favoritism, and contempt for justice, in a way that makes people recoil from such methods; then he gave the victory, in the end, to justice and humanity, so that the picture was complete with its lights and its shadows, interspersed with "touches" of jest that help to soften the atmosphere when the crisis of injustice, or of straying from the right, grows severe.

And when he brought it to the stage, he secured specialists — amateurs though they were — who managed to carry out their roles as if they had spent their lives on the boards; nor is that strange, for the whole matter is a matter of taste.

Mrs. Layla Saad, who played the role of Nuha, succeeded in being the very model of those whom the unjust try to use for ends contrary to justice, yet who cannot kill within their souls the instinct of goodness, which appears at the end and restores to people their faith in lofty principles. Likewise, Mrs. Marie Saad was able to play the role of the mother confident in the upbringing of her children, just as Miss Hitti succeeded in bringing out the humanity of the nun, and Mr. Musa Suleiman was able to appear in the guise of the aged father, deep in his grief, deep in his tenderness — even though Mr. Musa has not yet played the role of a father in real life!

As for Mr. Medawar, the play's director, there is no better way to describe his success than what Mrs. Rihan said to him when we met at her home about a week after the play: "I had been longing, Ustad, to see you, so I could make certain you had gone back to being what you were." For people had almost come to believe that, after such acting, no good could ever again come from him, and they were not reassured until they gathered with him after the play and found that he had once more become the Mr. Medawar they had always known.

Mr. Albert Badre, who took a principal role in the play, is no stranger to the stage; he is an author and a director and one of the lovers of refined acting, and he has proved that, despite his withdrawal from the stage for his various affairs, he still yearns for it with the longing of a gifted expert.

Mr. Kazan was fortunate in the choice of his role, and excelled in it.

And the role of Mr. Fuad Badr, short as it was, sufficed to prove Mr. Badr's ability in this art, for he managed to play the role of the old man, the killer in disguise — though he is no old man, no killer, and no man in disguise...

Nor shall I forget the role played by Mr. Salah Abboushi, who made the audience laugh as "Uncle Ni'ma" without ever overstepping the bounds of good taste. And although there are those who slight certain short roles, I hold that they display competence exactly as the great roles do; my proof of it is the success of Messrs. Joseph Ghosn, Sami Najjar, and Antoine Bajaazi in their short roles.

There remains one small general word which I must say, after having recorded the play's success in authorship and in direction: it is that our theater — and I do not think Mr. Medawar would disagree with me here — succeeds in proportion as its language draws close to life.