An arabic winter of discontent

Richard III as a power-hungry oil-rich Arab is the latest manifestation of the long history between Shakespeare and the Arab world, writes Mary Russell

If Richard III, surely Shakespeare's most viper-tongued anti-hero, is as bad as even he himself says he is, how is it that the Lady Anne, whose husband and father-in-law he has just had murdered, falls for him over and over again?

She did it twice recently at Stratford-upon-Avon, where two separate productions of this intriguing play were running alongside each other, and you don't get that happening to King Lear or Macbeth.

At the Courtyard Theatre was Jonathan Slinger giving the most physically repulsive portrayal of Richard that I have ever seen - and I have seen many - while at the Swan Theatre was Syrian actor Fayez Kazak portraying Richard as a devious, power-hungry despot surrounded by devious, power-hungry men, which is just as Shakespeare had meant us to see him.

But wait: Kazak's Richard is an Arab despot who struts the stage in desert robes, a keffiyeh on his head and a bleeding heart on his sleeve, which everyone except the wretched Anne can clearly see.

Directed by Kuwaiti Sulayman Al-Bassam, whose country was invaded by the West's favourite Arab hate figure, Saddam Hussein, Richard III: An Arab Tragedy gives a different slant to this classic play in which the Emir Gloucester (Richard), head of an oil-rich state, stops at nothing to get to the position he so covets, that of autocratic ruler, and if, among other things, this means the careless destruction of a few women on the way, then that is what he has to do.

In the heartbreaking if infamous seduction scene, he dons a burka in order to gain entry to the harem, and much else besides. The results are both tragic and humorous, for these are Arab actors who know well how to mock themselves and their culture, both social and religious: just as Richard's treacherous lips are about to join with Anne's, he is interrupted by what is, at that moment, the most powerful of passion-killers - the call of the muezzin. There aren't many laughs in Richard III but this production slots them in at just the right moment.

And irony too. Buckingham, the wheeler-dealer king-maker, is the only one to wear western clothes as befits his ability to straddle both east and west. It is he who spins the media, using mobile phone, text messages and TV newscasters to aid or impede Richard's progress to power and perdition.

Al-Bassam, a graduate of Edinburgh University, who was 17 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company to direct the play using actors from his own Kuwaiti-based company, which has actors drawn from five different Arab countries and includes an Israeli.

He has dropped some characters but invented a small part for himself, that of the US ambassador, who, few will be surprised to learn, is behind the despot's plan to take control of the country. Dollars flow as smoothly as oil and so too does the dialogue which, incidentally, is all Arabic, though there are sur-titles as well.

Al-Bassam's views on Anne are interesting. "She is the disempowered woman," he told me, "a political danger to herself, the only one left of that regime and with no one to protect her except Richard. So subjugating herself to him is not as unbelievable as it might seem." But it is at the end, as the victorious Richmond (the first Tudor) announces that Richard, the Plantagenet tyrant, is gone and that sweet days lie ahead for the righteous, a street-fighter appears over the parapet, Kalashnikov in hand, shouting "Allahu al Akhbar," and the stage is plunged into heart-stopping blackness. Those familiar with the Tudors in Ireland and the Bush administration in the Middle East will be in a position to make an informed guess as to what might have happened next. Incidentally, the programme notes point out that "it is a bitter truism that Islam is, at times, misused by authority and perverted to serve agendas of power".

Shakespeare and the Arab world go back a long way. The establishment, in 1583, of a British Trade Consul in Aleppo opened up that part of the world to English merchants who retailed stories of Syria's most cosmopolitan city. Othello, who smote the uncircumcised dog in Aleppo, was published in 1604. Later, English sailors en route to India brought news of Shakespeare's plays to the Arabs along the Persian Gulf.

With Al-Bassam the exchange continues, though this production has not been easy to finance. The company includes 13 actors, a group of five Kuwaiti musicians, a Kuwaiti costume designer and an Arabic translator. It is only in the last three years that the Kuwaiti economy has shown signs of recovery from the Iraqi invasion and its government is reluctant to spend money on the arts. Thus the main backer has been a Kuwaiti investment company, which has also set up the country's first recycling project. Nevertheless, this is a production that travels well, given the current political situation, and if it were ever put on in Ireland it would have our many Arab residents queuing up for tickets.

Traditionalists would be wise to cast aside their scepticism, for Al-Bassam's company has made this play their own, managing to remain faithful to England's greatest playwright, while at the same time giving the production a slant that is satisfyingly subversive, and if Al-Bassam and his translator, Mehdi Al-Sayigh, have taken a few liberties with the text this need not be a problem: both Shakespeare and Richard have shoulders big enough to carry that.

• Richard III: An Arab Tragedy starts touring in Europe in May, with Athens its first stop