Review: We Live in Cairo, a Rent for the Egyptian Revolution

The explosion of youthful energy that radiates off the stage in We Live in Cairo at New York Theatre Workshop is akin to what audiences would have experienced when Rent premiered there nearly 30 years ago. The passion and vigor of the company is not the only thing about this new musical by greenhorn writers Daniel and Patrick Lazour that will remind you of Jonathan Larson’s now classic. Despite its impressive scope and sheer ambition, We Live in Cairo clearly owes a debt to the staging and structure of its theatrical forebear in both positive and negative ways.

We Live in Cairo tells the story of a group of friends disillusioned by the decades-long reign of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. As the show begins, our heroes are gathered at a release party. Muslim photographer Layla (Nadina Hassan) thinks she and her Coptic Christian beau Amir (Ali Louis Bourzgui) are celebrating a new album — he and his aspiring lawyer brother Hany (Michael Khalid Karadsheh) are songwriters — but the gathering is really to welcome home Fadwa (Rotana Tarabzouni), who just spent two months in solitary for anti-Mubarak messaging on Facebook. Also on hand is artist Karim (John El-Jor), who has a small following as a graffiti artist and political satirist.

Soon after, the group views photos of the disfigured corpse of Khaled Said, a young man beaten to death in police custody (this is one of the many fact-based events that this fictionalized musical incorporates). Said’s death incites mass protests across Egypt, which eventually lead to the resignation and Mubarak and the election of Mohamed Morsi, which the friends view as a mixed blessing. Hany is insistent that a free and fair election is what they were fighting for all along, and the results must be respected. Fadwa is disillusioned by the replacement of one autocrat for another.

It’s almost impossible to not look at the characters through the Larson lens. Fadwa is a firebrand protestor like Maureen; Hany is the sensible Mark; Amir, always carrying a guitar and determined to write a song that changes the world, is Roger. Collins and Angel aren’t quite antecedents for Karim and his conflicted protégé Hassan (Drew Elhamalawy), but elements of Angel’s flamboyance and Collins’s pragmatism are quite visible within Karim’s lusty energy for his young mentee. Even Taibi Magar’s staging and Ann Yee’s choreography are somewhat indebted to what Michael Greif and Marlies Yearby laid out. Before the plot of the second act begins, the actors gather at the lip of the stage to welcome us back in a “Seasons of Love”-style choral number.

Tilly Grimes provides a transportive set that takes on a life of its own when hit with Bradley King’s lighting and David Bengali’s projections. At one point, a pair of muslin curtains are unfurled across the ceiling — an effect that would be stunning if it didn’t happen so haphazardly. That’s how I felt about Magar’s staging in general: too disorganized and lacking in specificity, which ultimately detracts from the performances. None of the actors seem to have really found their way into their roles, though El-Jor and Bourzgui (late of The Who’s Tommy), come the closest.

If the show didn’t have so much on its mind, I’d be less inclined to give the Rent allusions a pass, but I deeply appreciate what the Lazour brothers are trying to accomplish, imperfect as it is. I’d happily listen to their score as a cast recording, though the orchestrations by Daniel Lazour and Michael Starobin don’t leave much room for differentiation between the songs (still, it’s hard not to enjoy hearing an oud and a darbuka played live). Their book is a bit of a shaggy dog, with multiple endings and a lot of cyclical repetition. In trying to cover so much and remain an ensemble piece, the most interesting things, like the discreetly queer back-and-forth between Karim and Hassan, get shortchanged.

With greater focus (and probably an outside pair of eyes to tighten things up), We Live in Cairo could be major; at this moment, it’s more respectable than truly enjoyable. It has a lot to say, it just hasn’t quite figured out how best to say it.