Under the Arabian Moon

Report by Leon Conrad
June 2009
Seductive Stories from the Arabian Nights – Retold by Leon Conrad in a Unique Combination of Poetic Storytelling, Live Music & Shadow Theatre

Leon Conrad’s new adaptation of tales from the Arabian Nights, will have its world premiere at the Roundhouse in London this August as part of the Camden Fringe.

Leon Conrad, a storyteller of Egyptian descent, is both inspired and possessed by the stories he heard told in the souks and bazaars of Cairo and Alexandria as a young boy, growing up under the Arabian moon.

In sixty minutes, kings; princes; merchants and eunuchs are enchanted by love … queens; princesses; servants and slaves find new power granted to them by their admirers. Complex gender games unfold and both sides are captivated by each others’ wiles under the Arabian moon.

Powerful King Shariar lusts for virgins and thirsts for their blood until Scheherezade enchants him … not with her virginity, but with her stories. In Leon Conrad’s retelling, a metaphorical thread neatly ties three rarely-heard stories from the Arabian Nights together. A motif on Scheherezade’s wedding dress attracts the attention of her husband, King Shariar and a needle-painting of a hunting scene puts a handsome prince under a spell of love; a band around the waist of a mysterious woman repels a passionate lover and an embroidered shawl enables a wife to be unfaithful and be rewarded by her husband for it. The threads unwind and are replaced by subtle textures of sexual tension as the stories unfold.

While these layers of texture and sexual tension build in a tantalizing manner, live music by Iranian musician, Sam Fathi (on tambour and daaf) gently seduces the subtext. But does the shadowy figure of Monooka, the veiled shadow-puppeteer, end up casting more light than shadow on what’s happening from behind her theatrical shadow-screen veil? A fourth and final story is told which reveals that perhaps there’s more to this than meets the eye when light and dark collide … under the all-seeing eye of the moon.

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