Livia Arditti, Antonia Salib, Nicole Ansari-Cox, Gamze Sanli Photographer credit: Kate Hockenhull photography
Simon Jenner, November 4th 2024
Adaptations can carry truths even the original doesn’t match. “What is a revolution for if you can’t dance!” shouts a woman, in Turkish journalist and writer Ece Temelkuran’s 2013 novel Women Who Blow on Knots. Adapted for the Arcola by its deputy artistic director Leyla Nazli, it runs in Studio 1 till November 23rd.
That quote already adapted, misquotes revolutionary Emma Goldman but is indelibly now hers. It pops up in this road movie fiction, set against the 2011 Arab Spring. Nazli compresses 433 pages of myth-making, endless tales and poetic expression. That last part was the most difficult to let go, Nazli says. In just under two hours 20 it’s an impressive distillation, grabbing the story’s dramatic essentials: though inevitably it can’t screen out a certain wandering picaresque and an inherent lack of climax. It’s full of suddenlys though, is satisfyingly unpredictable, and like the novel, will give you much you’ll not find anywhere else.
It follows the seemingly wild arc of four women thrown together: Tunisian dancer Amira (Antonia Salib, seen recently here in After Sex), Egyptian academic Maryam (Livia Arditti), Turkish journalist fired from her job Eve (Gamze Sanli), and mysterious Madame Lilla (Nicole Ansari-Cox). The title references a passage in the Koran: beware women who blow on knots.
Drawn together in a restless night with a dash of spirits and Amira’s need to escape, Madame Lilla conducts them on a road trip starting from Tunisia (where 2011 kicked off) through Libya and Egypt to Lebanon. It’s realised on Neil Irish’s stony revolve with a few props (often flowering jasmine pots) and occasional use of a balcony, lit by Richard Williamson with clever stencils lighting a country or city from above to let us know where we are; and Oguz Kaplangi’s sound referencing Tunisian and other music.
Lilla’s part political operator, part chiffon-swathed chameleon, who beguiles and infuriates revolutionaries Maryam and Amira; and puzzles Eve, a Turkish journalist. They must change their lives. “Just how far south?” sceptic Maryam demands. “Way down south.”
Nicole Ansari-Cox, Oncel Camci, Livia Arditti, Antonia Salib, Gamze Sanli Photographer credit: Kate Hockenhull photography
As they traverse various stop-offs Madame Lilla knows (mainly friendly, once hostile, all stamped by her presence) it’s clear there’s a hidden feminist level to North Africa to the Middle East to discover via battered Cadillac and camel. Each woman confronts their pasts and bonds, swerving the socio-political turmoil they’re both celebrating and fleeing: it’s already soured. There’s knots and destinies to unpick before they take up weaving their own fates.
Ansari-Cox apparates a few minutes in and commands in a whisper. Coming into the production at short notice she seems to have been there all along. It’s an easy part to inhabit though difficult to give depth to, being so numinous. Ansari-Cox exudes this with flickers of scorn or vulnerability.
Arditti’s hard-edged academic Maryam is a role more confrontational than sympathetic, but Arditti expresses her character’s simmering pain through resentment and tension, melting to a great reveal.
Livia Arditti, Antonia Salib, Nicole Ansari-Cox, Gamze Sanli Photographer credit: Kate Hockenhull photography
Salib’s part is the most exuberant, celebrating Lucy Cullingford’s movement (most engaging invoking a camel train) and here, Beyhan Murphy’s work as belly dance consultant. There’s comic moments as the others try emulating her. It takes nerve for Arditti in particular to dance that badly.
Fine ensemble work too from Mercedes Assad: particularly as Saida, commander of a freedom fighting group, and Fatima, a natural therapist who offers to heal. Maryam, who needs it most, characteristically refuses.
Sara Diab as one of the young freedom fighters and in love with Oncel Camci’s soldier, is both joyful then inconsolable in one of the most explosive moments of the show. A scene repeated everywhere, horribly resonant. Diab also charms as six-year-old Melika and like the ensemble picks up other small parts.
Camci’s often deployed as surly waiter or camel driver, though finds his apotheosis as Amira’s poetic letter-writing lover Mohammad who cannot be forgiven. Paradoxically, this is one of the few moments Nazli can insert poetry; since most of it in the form of tales and nostrums must be stripped out.
Livia Arditti, Antonia Salib, Gamze Sanli Photographer credit: Kate Hockenhull photography
There’s a slightly outdated way of addressing gender roles: Maryam being a “man-woman” and Amirya ”too feminine. Nazli clarifies the dynamics of these to show gender roles continually questioned: hence women wield guns as the KDF have done ever since.
Eve reflects: “I remember how it all began and to this day I still have a hard time believing it ever really happened.” Like a dream, this show shimmers too. Heartening, engaging, memorably characterised, continually episodic, it’s as fine a realisation as anyone could manage. In some ways this might work better as a film: but the immediacy, cries, reveals are inherently theatrical and precious. A must-see.
Sara Diab, Oncel Camci Photographer credit: Kate Hockenhull photography
Women Who Blow on Knots Written by Ece Temelkuran adapted by Leyla Nazli Directed by Lerzen Pamir, Designer Neil Irish, Lighting Designer Richard Willliamson, Sound Designer Oguz Kaplangi, Assistant Director Balim Kar, Costume Supervisor & Assistant Designer Defne Ozdogan,
Production Manager Carrie Croft, Stage Manager Ibraheem Hamirani, Cover Stage Manager James Christiansen, ASMs Mathilda Finlow & Alexander Dickinson.
Movement Director Lucy Cullingford, Belly Dance Consultant Beyhan Murphy, Cover Artwork Arundhati Jayawant.