THE talking point surrounding the premiere of Queen Of The Nile has been the return to Hull Truck Theatre after 30 years of founder Mike Bradwell at the tiller of Tim Fountain’s new play.
Director Bradwell prided himself on making “dangerous and dirty theatre” at Hull, and “now I’m coming back to make some more”, he tantalises.
Dangerous? Well, Fountain’s rumbustious comedy drama is set in Luxor, Egypt, at the time of the Arab Spring, the revolution just around the corner, as the groundswell of political change surges across the plot without ever acquiring the authority or insight of a bulletin from a BBC foreign correspondent. It takes more than the news footage on Mic Pool’s digital projections to do that.
As for “dirty”, the language of middle-aged Wakefield best friends Debbie and Jan is as industrial as 19th-century Britain, and about as subtle as Fountain’s addiction to puns. He rather forces his jokes, like Wakefield forces its rhubarb.
For all its raw, smutty comedy, Fountain’s play is serious at its core, inspired by his writing-and-relaxation trips to Egypt over the past 20 years.
These led to his fascination with the relationship between the British and the Egyptians and “the contradictions inherent in sex tourism as well as the confusions of sexual identity in the strict Muslim cultures”.
Brassy Debbie (Lizzie Roper), 40, leaps at the chance to join prim gym bunny Jan (Michelle Butterly) by the pool of a five-star hotel in the cynically exploitative tourist honeypot of Luxor.
“The beer’s cheap, the men are cheap and they’ve got Emmerdale on satellite,” Debbie purrs.
Young Egyptian men can indeed be bought – as facilitated by gay vulture Lesley (Dudley Sutton), a smug ex-pat restaurateur – in the gigolo shape of boat captain/waiter Asif Khan’s Mahmoud, whom Lesley uses for his own devices too.
Lesley is Fountain’s most interesting and subversive character, intriguingly and mischievously played by Sutton, but elsewhere Queen Of The Nile is too much a clash of the ruddy seaside postcard and lightweight politics.
Queen Of The Nile runs at Hull Truck Theatre until May 11. Box office: 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk
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