A brief but interesting mention in a long article.
“The most extraordinary performance I went to in these strange weeks was a production of ‘The Sound of Music’. I thought initially that the audience’s enthusiasm was testament to Tehran’s thirst for Americana, but the tale of 1930s Austria was remarkably apt for Iran today. The nunnery looked oddly like a women’s madrassa in Qom, the country’s religious centre, and the audience seemed thrilled by a female rebel challenging the stifling atmosphere. They sang along when she escaped to the hills and sighed when, pricked by pangs of conscience, she kept returning. The finale was given an Iranian twist. In the original, Maria and her charges escape from the Nazis to freedom. Here, instead, they traipsed across the stage as voiceless refugees dragging battered suitcases, a caustic reminder of the fate of those who flee their homeland. Instead of the family singing the last song, a triumphant phalanx of clergy and Hitler Youth.” |
