Critical Survey

Welcome to the third issue of Critical Survey on Shakespeare and the Arab/Islamic world. The previous two issues dealt in depth with the reception of Shakespeare in the region within the context of ‘Global Shakespeares’, divided broadly into critical approaches and translation strategies on the one hand and adaptation and performance on the other.¹ This latest issue, sub-titled ‘Shakespeare and the Levant’, widens the range beyond Arab and Arabic-speaking responses, translations and adaptations. It is in conversation with the two previous publications and seeks to continue some of the discussion begun there.

Surveying a range of productions of Shakespeare in the UAE, this article observes a tendency to produce (or tour) the great tyrant tragedies Macbeth and Richard III to explore the obligations and expectations of good rulership. In the comedies, and in Romeo and Juliet, productions seem to highlight what limitations have been placed upon the rights of women. The sources of these productions, often touring from the UK, or produced by expats (from anglophone countries) begs the question: are these issues of interest to the general citizenship of the UAE, or does Shakespeare performance persist as a form of moral preaching of ‘Western’ ideals in a post-colonial context? The article ends by looking at Rajat Kapoor's radical reworkings of ‘gibberish’ Shakespeare, that consciously forefront the place of the ‘other’ in performing and touring Shakespeare in a post-colonial context.

Interviews with practitioners that appear in academic journals often take the form of back and forth between interviewer and respondent, implying a relatively equal relationship between both participants. This article gives primacy to the respondent, Shereen Saif, by opting for a reflective critical commentary that explores and teases out various implications. The interview provides material on aspects of the performing arts in the UAE, especially in Shakespeare studies, with a focus on productions of Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. Issues of globalisation and localisation are explored within a context of the reception and creative reimagining of Shakespearean drama, particularly by means of the techniques of immersive theatre. The interview also raises pertinent, pressing concerns about live performance culture in the country.

This article examines the adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1597) in four Egyptian films: al-Badāwiyah al-Ḥasnā’ (A Beautiful Bedouin Woman, 1947); Ḥassan wa Na‘īmah (Hassan and Naimah, 1959); al-‘Alamein (Two Icons, 1965); and Qiṣat al-Ḥai al-Garbī (West Side Story, 1979). The Egyptian screenwriters employ Shakespeare's text to address local anxieties at home, such as patriarchal control of daughters’/sons’ perception of love and marriage, the crisis of unemployment, illiteracy, class conflict, and the discourse of honour. The shifting of scenes from Shakespeare's Verona to local settings in Egypt – varying from Cairo to the desert and rural areas – reflects the significance of reproducing Shakespeare in the Egyptian film industry during the twentieth century. This study fills the gap left by modern scholarship that focuses on analysing the adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in Arabic literature (‘high’ culture), which has overlooked Arab Egyptian films or what might be called ‘New Arab Shakespeare’.

This study explores the screen adaptations of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in Egyptian cinema and television, focusing on the 2004 film Ḥobak Nār (Your Love Is Like Fire) written by screenwriter Ehāb Rādy, and the recent 2025 fifty-episode Egyptian television series Ḥarb Al-Gebālī, written by Samāh Al-Ḥarīrī. Drawing on screen adaptation theory, Shakespeare scholarship and feminist theory, the study delves into how these adaptations reflect and interpret themes of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in the context of Egyptian culture and society through cinema and television. Shakespeare's plays, which appeal in various ways to the social and political circumstances of all cultures, have been indigenised as screen adaptations in many languages, thus creating a rich tapestry of local, intercultural or foreign Shakespeares around the globe. The universal appeal of Shakespeare's plays has made them relevant to be localised in nearly every major language because their cultural, political and social themes resonate with a wide range of contemporary ideologies of concern to modern audiences. More than any author of any tongue, Shakespeare has been used as an instrument of feminist, colonial and postcolonial critique of misgovernment and patriarchy across almost all major cultures.

In this article, I examine Mehran Dasht-Bozorgi's Awake Hamlet (2022), a Persian appropriation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, as a lens through which to explore censorship and political repression in contemporary Iran. The appropriation depicts the censorial tactics of defamation and exclusion, reflecting the broader context of suppression of dissent. Drawing on critical opinions of Hannah Arendt and Margaret Litvin's discussions on Shakespeare's Hamlet in the Arab world, I discuss how Iran's totalitarian state employs both direct and indirect tactics of censorship to stifle opposition. Through the recontextualisation of Hamlet, Dasht-Bozorgi's play critiques the political power structures and the practice of censorship endemic to Iran, offering insights into the Iranian people's struggle for freedom of expression and the complex relationship between political power and artistic resistance.

This article examines contemporary Islamic adaptations of Shakespeare's Othello and observes the repercussions of Islam in these productions. The backbone is Ron Daniels’ Othello produced in 2016 by the Shakespeare Theatre Company, and Richard Twyman's production of Othello in 2019 under the Othello Project, which was jointly initiated by the English Touring Theatre (ETT) and Amal (a programme of the Saïd Foundation) the following year. Portraying the Moor of Venice in Daniels’ adaptation of Othello, Pakistani-American actor Faran Tahir echoes the production's Islamic references distinctly by acting out various Muslim subjectivities onto the stage. In parallel, Twyman's 2019 production of Othello, developed as part of ETT's Othello Project, formed one component of a broader initiative that included talks, workshops, artistic responses, and theatrical productions exploring the racial and Islamic dimensions of Shakespeare's Othello. Embracing largely Muslim writers, artists, producers and their Islamic representations, Twyman's version reveals a similar perspective of Islamicising Othello.

Shakespeare's fast-spreading, even seemingly ‘universal’ appeal has by now become an important gateway to learn about other cultures and other histories in the ‘Global Shakespeares’ movement. An important conceptual breakthrough of this field also means that critics can no longer elide race, gender, sexuality, religion and other categories within general, ‘universal’ considerations of ‘human nature’; rather they are called to view these as shifting categories in multiple locations in which the plays perform different cultural functions, with varying political ramifications. Within these contexts, the global Shakespeare movement has provided useful answers, while offering more fluid visions of subjects and locations.

The cultural transformations of the twentieth century, particularly those shaped by globalisation, multiculturalism and the evolving politics of racial equality, have increasingly positioned Muslims at the centre of public and policy discourses, even as Muslim communities have contested dominant paradigms, including the secular framing of multiculturalism and the primacy of racialised identity categories. The early twenty-first century, marked by watershed events such as the Rushdie Affair, 9/11, 7/7 and the Iraq War, intensified both societal anxieties and artistic interest surrounding Muslim representation. In response, British theatre has witnessed a notable rise in the commissioning and staging of works by British Muslim playwrights, signalling a shift towards more culturally nuanced and self-articulated depictions of Muslim identities. This article explores how British Muslims negotiate and express their cultural, religious and social identities on stage, and how they are constructed as the West's ‘new others’ in Asif Khan's Combustion (2017) and Ishy Din's Approaching Empty (2019), situating these texts within broader discourses of belonging, otherness and postcolonial critique.