Theatre review: 'Ye-ha' + the end

Yesterday, in yet another completely pointless extra-curricular activity, I went to the children's school to see the juniors' annual play. This year, a musical called 'Ye-Ha'. Obviously a play set in the old west staged in a country obsessed with the creeping influence of westernisation was going to raise a few eyebrows, and indeed the production team and their 150-strong cast didn't shy away from controversy or bold political statement. The opening scene saw every cast member appear on stage miming either a gun or a bow and arrrow, each firing their weapon and running offstage in a sustained absurdist tableau that lasted almost fifteen minutes. The narrow signifiers of West/East, stage right/stage left and Cowboy/Indian were revealed as arbitrary divisions leading only to bloodshed.

Following this the play defied simple allegorical readings; sometimes the stage represented Israel, sometimes Mecca, and sometimes just plain old Splodge City, the town without a sherrif under threat from the meanest bandits in the west. Who will be the new Sherrif? Can Wilbur the cook get to the gold underneath the saloon before the bandits do? Will Islam ever happily co-exist with Western liberal democracy? Throughout the play cast members broke down the fourth wall, looking out into the crowd and wildly gesticulating as if to say, 'Hi Mummy - when will the fighting end?'

The piece ended with the discovery that what lay beneath the saloon was not gold, but oil. More trouble was on its way for the inhabitants of Splodge City. But the provocation didn't stop there or with the fall of the curtain - as the lights came up a sardonic voice over the p.a. announced that complimentary 'Americana' burgers would be available outside. The audience was literally being asked whether - after what they had seen - they would swallow the processed flesh of American consumerist ideology. I for one declined - not because I'm a vegetarian or because the burgers looked manky - but because to do so would have left a bitter taste in my mouth for some time to come.

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At the end of this month the family will take a two week holiday in the UK, and when they return to Saudi Arabia I won't be coming back with them. I've told the parents that I feel out of my depth and that the kids need someone with more experience; the truth is that the hours are too long and I'm done with being a surrogate parent for their insane offspring. When I told the son last week he surprised me by seeming genuinely disappointed and I felt a slight twinge of guilt, but since then he has resumed his campaign of random violence against me and I don't feel too bad about it at all. The daughter has refused to have lessons with me since I confiscated her laptop last week, and she almost definitely considers my leaving some kind of victory. I do not care.

My biggest regrets now are that I'm passing up the opportunity to create a blog post entitled 'Return of the Jeddah' and that I'm going to have to say an early goodbye to Luchman. He has no access to a computer and doesn't receive any post, so the chances of us staying in contact are fairly slim. We've been hanging out every couple of days since we met, mostly sitting in his room watching MTV Lebanon or going to his friend's cafe, and he's teaching me a few little tidbits of Arabic every time we see each other. The guy is going to receive one spectacular gift for being my only friend.

This blog will also be coming to a premature end. I may do a few more posts once I'm back in the UK, but turning my reabsorption into western society into some kind of saga after only a two month absence would probably be a bit excessive. Trying to take ADHD/tourettes boy around the science museum will probably lead to some blogworthy material though, and I'm also going to be involved in recruiting my replacement. I'm not sure I'll have the conscience to meet him without trying to give some sort of coded warning or blurting out 'it's a trap!' before the parents drag me into a back room where I'm beaten up by their son.