KING LEAR AT THE THEATRE ROYAL

A very fit and mobile Derek Jacobi give a performance which will live long for its austere minimalist majesty.

Though it is almost sacrilegious to say , Shakespeare has a dramatic lapse in conveying the graduation from top down aspirations to hand over absolute power to a troika of wards , albeit to his own blood.From self satisfaction to outright incurable rage does not quite happen convincingly.And less convincing are justifications that tyrants playing at being benevolent would behave in that way , but there is a certain tone of our bard can do no wrong about their argumentation.

This point is worth remembering because King Lear , of all the major roles of Shakespeare , is one in which the actor has to get past this in order to proceed to the much stronger balance later in the play without it appearing to be a melodrama rather than a study of the closest of universal familial and close knot social society themes this otherwise great work explores.

Derek does a great job as the role he plays is more emotional than overtly political , which is the easiest get-out way to look into the role , with bombast and hysterics replacing the substance.

Derek takes the role full on and shows his class by achieving all the good points with an almost nonchalant degree of ease.

RAJA SHEHADEH AT AYEWRITE

Humanitarian lawyer and author Raja Shehadeh has a long established connection to Scotland.I first saw him at the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2003.Since then he has collaborated with Scottish playwright David Greig to have a stage adaptation of When The Bulbul Stops Singing performed in the same city , it won the Amnesty International Award for Best Human Rights Themed Play for that year.

Raja is an eloquent, understated , highly effective articulator of the genuine Human Right for the Palestinians to be treated equally before the great court of Universal Justice.

His latest Book is on the material and transcendent them of land and time.The Rift in the title is a play on the geographical location of Palestine in the Great Rift Valley , beginning in present day Turkey , going along Lebanon to the Jordan Valley , the Dead Sea ( the lowest point on Earth) and all along Eastern Africa.Raja Great Uncle , like Raja was born within the great mountain ranges on either side of the Valley , though at a point North of Ramallah hence the continuum through space and time of their relative experiences , one fighting the later Ottomans , todays taking on the bitter ender zionist colonialists.

The Rift in time , is no rift at all but another continuum , generations before him saw of external empires , and so will the children of today.

One point worth bearing in mind is Rajas statement the Ottoman Empire in its 400 year reign was tolerant of religion , allowing all communities to co-exist without one dominating the other.Debt and bureaucratic decline in the later years is where problems set in.Israel , on the other hand is systematically tied to domination , to the point , which will be reached within a decade or so , of using artificial ethical gymnastics to ensure domination of an area in which non-Jews will be in the majority.

One continuum Raja has learned from his Uncle of the past is that the region can only live in Peace if there is equality and complete Freedom of movement within the region for all its population , including the right of return for those unjustly expelled in the traumas of 48 and later.





In the video below Raja talks about his walks in todays Palestine , what comes out is that all that is seemingly lost is remembered and will will return no matter what perverse policies are persued totake the Humanity in the Region.