An Aimless Expedition

Arabia! Arabia!

Arabia! Arabia! is the kind of play that happens when a playwright doesn’t have a clear idea of what he hopes to accomplish and what effect he wants to have on the audience.  Presented by The Plagiarists at the Jarvis Square Theatre, Alexander Utz’s world-premiere play, loosely based on an actual historical event, concerns itself with a group of explorers and scientists commissioned by the Danish government to explore the Middle East — “Arabia Felix,” or “Happy Arabia” — in the mid-18th century.  

This bare-bones description might suggest that the play, directed by Jonathan Shaboo, concerns itself with, say, colonialism, or Biblical anthropology, or with the scientific method and the legacy of the still-recent Age of Exploration, or, perhaps, on a more psychological or sociological level, with the inevitably awkward and likely contentious encounter between Western travelers and the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula.

But Arabia! Arabia! is not about any of these things, at least not to any detectable degree.  The evening is almost entirely focused on the pecadilloes of the explorers themselves, and a very strange and off-putting bunch they are.  There’s a philologist (don’t call him a linguist!) who can’t even speak Arabic; a cartographer; a botanist; an artist; an astronomer; an inept physician; and a narrator, who stands outside of the action of the play and possesses a book that tells of the expedition’s eventual fate (hint: it’s not good.)

The interactions among these characters is so broadly overplayed and borderline cartoonish that Arabia! Arabia! often resembles a children’s play.  The performances are “shouty,” over-enunciated, and obvious, and so too is the action.  When the philologist purchases arsenic to, it is presumed, poison the other members of the expedition, the audience is condescended to with the following lines of dialogue:  “Arsenic?  You mean the poison arsenic?” and, a little later, “arsenic?  As in poison arsenic?”

To some degree, one can regard this play as an intentional flat-out comedy, and enjoy the evening with that understanding in mind.  It explains much of the highly exaggerated body language and frenetic movement of the actors, though it doesn’t quite explain why the tragically ill-conceived, 6-year-long Danish Arabia Expedition, intended primarily to research the Old Testament, would be a natural subject for a comedy.  

There are some nicely done quieter moments, as when, near the play’s conclusion, we are given an interesting explanation of the origins of the terms “Arabia Felix,” and “Happy Arabia,” which, as it turns out, were both mistranslations of the term “fertile,” used to describe the geographic area we now call Yemen.  

The theatre’s tiny space is well-designed, and in a memorable touch, audience members have to tread across a patch of actual sand to reach their seats; those sitting close to the action will occasionally be sprayed with stray grains of sand as well.  But there is so much more rich material that could have been explored by this play but has been left undiscovered that I departed the theatre feeling as if I hadn’t really journeyed anywhere of consequence. 

Somewhat Recommended 

Reviewed by Michael Antman

June 15 – July 2

Presented by The Plagiarists at the Jarvis Square Theatre, 1439 W. Jarvis

Tickets are available at reservations@theplagiarists.org or by calling 773-963-7721.

Further information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com