Couched in his comedy, however, Rihani delivered potent messages about Egyptian society as it transitioned from being a British protectorate to an independent nation. As urbanization and migration from rural to urban areas accelerated, and as changing gender roles and questions of authenticity preoccupied Egyptians in the socio-political arena, Rihani’s entertainments delivered both social critique and a call for unity to a willing and eager audience. A cultural critic and immensely popular actor, I argue that the potency and popularity of Rihani’s comedy made him at once unifying and threatening.
On the one hand, Rihani’s stardom made his life experience exceptional. But his performance of colloquial street theater on the proscenium stage affirmed the value, vulnerabilities, and experiences of the urban Egyptian Everyman. Rihani’s stage was a place to challenge elite greed and hypocrisy, to play with modern ideals of strong women and sexuality with humor. He creatively promoted sectarian, class, and gender unity through laughter and song.
Contemporary Egyptian nationalists and theater critics, however, were not so enthralled. For them, if theater was not didactic, aphoristic, or morally uplifting, it was suspect. Playwright and critic Muhammed Taymur wrote that vaudeville and similar entertainments were “full of obscene jokes and shameful attitudes…such shameless plays are the most dangerous types on the morals.”[1] Worse was the insertion of seemingly trivial songs into those performances. If theater was a moral university (as many argued), one that connected a diverse population, just as mosques, churches, and schools did, then the stage was crucial to the moral and patriotic health of the newly independent nation.[2] Whether or not Rihani subverted the status quo, the potential for doing so was ever present.
In this paper, I use plays, advertisements, and contemporary journal articles to demonstrate how Rihani, a person both ordinary and extraordinary, both reflected and shaped post-independent, interwar Egypt.
[1] Muhammad Taymur, Hayatuna al-tamthiliyya, (Cairo: Matba‘at al-i’timad: 1922), 94.
[2] Amr Zakaria Abd Allah, “The Theory of Theatre for Egyptian Nationalists in the First Quarter of the Twentieth Century,” Quaderni di Studi Arabi, Nuova Serie, Vol. 4 (2009): 204.