Yasser Mansour – a Palestinian actor set to star in a regional UK production of Merchant of Venice – has lost his props and isn’t happy about it. In fact, he’s livid, and Abdelkader Benali’s play Yasser tracks the reasons why. Benali’s piece is set in Yasser’s dressing room on opening night and is an extended monologue, which recounts the tale of this man’s lost props, near-lost girlfriend, fragile identity (which has neat parallels with Shylock’s situation) and conflicted childhood in an unstable Palestine. But although this play, produced by Anglo-Dutch company Double Agent, is probing and emotional in places, it is not a great piece of drama: it is too scattered and too damn angry to really reach out to its audience.

William el-Gardi is an excellent actor, with buckets of passion, who owns the stage easily and looks like an actor in control. But despite Gardi’s graceful and persuasive authority, there is something hardened and inaccessible to his performance. He is angry – and I mean really angry – for almost the entire piece, and it starts to wear the audience down. It is tough to listen to (no matter how valid his character’s complaints might be) and even the visceral impact of his blazing, enveloping rage cools a few scenes in. 

It is not only that a character this angry is hard to watch – he is also hard to believe. His anger seems wrapped up in memories from the past, and although he is obviously a passionately political man, whose girlfriend accuses him of ‘ranting and raving’, I can’t buy this level of intensity for this long. Are we meant to believe this ranting man is genuinely preparing for his performance – or does that not matter a jot here? Are we meant to take this as a realistic rant, prompted by a shitty chain of events on opening night, or is this meant to be loose, symbolic and more theatrical piece?

Ideally, this type of monologue should be a blend of the two – the realistic and the theatrical – that uses the neat framework of an actor’s opening night to fluently explore the events that led up to this moment and monumental role. The only problem is, I don’t trust the framework – not once does this feel like an opening night, other than a few scattered tannoy announcements, which break up rather than complement the show. Perhaps, if we could have sensed the countdown to curtain up, there would have been more urgency here. As it is, it feels like these few ‘realistic’ touches (from director Teunki van der Sluijs) are there to remind us of the situation, rather than cement it. This lends the show a whiff of inauthenticity, which makes it hard to trust in and give oneself over to.   

Just as the real moments don’t feel tangible enough, nor too to the flights of fancy and flashes from Yasser’s past feel quite bold, released or dramatic enough. These scenes should flare into life, but they are a touch stiff and muted. It feels like we are watching Yasser reconstruct his life, rather than watching this life unfold, in another world and another time. Obviously, this is one man creating a wealth of people and scenarios, so the options for these flashbacks are limited – but it would’ve been good to see less stress on the actor creating the moment and more emphasis on the stage giving life to that moment. This way, the play would’ve been able to sweep over its audience, rather than jumping between ‘past and ‘present, ‘symbolic’ and ‘real’, but never quite merging the two.

Still, the fact that the final big speech - with Yasser the Palestinian delivering Shylock the Jew’s defining monologue (‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?’) - works very well, is testimony to the sound intellectual reasoning behind this piece and the links it is trying to forge. This central comparison is a useful one and when Yasser gives voice to Shylock’s words, one can sense the fragility of this Palestinian’s identity, the anger this fragility has created and the stubborn, blazing strength of his own national pride. It is a powerful moment, but a quiet and restrained one, too. It is telling that the first time Yasser simmers down – and trusts in the words to create the emotions – is also the first time that the anger, pride, passion and fear contained in this piece are released on-stage and into the audience. 

Till 24 October 2009