The Argus: Brighton Festival 2012

In 1917, Beirut resident’s joy at the liberation of Jerusalem swiftly turned to disillusionment when instead of Arab independence (as promised) British liberators carved out the region with the French. A World I Loved is Wadad Makdisi Cortas’s story, an Arab woman who though a child at that time used the occasion to introduce her memoirs spanning the ensuing often turbulent 60 years.

Cortas’s daughter, Mariam Said, set the scene for the evening with a little clue in her slightly nervous prologue of the compelling narrative set to unfold. Through an unlikely combination of old-fashioned poetic storytelling (courtesy of stage veteran and Festival Director Vanessa Redgrave, Cortas’s grand-daughter Najla Said and Jordanian born Nadim Sawalha), projected photographs, Beethoven and maps – which clearly depicted the transient geographical and political borders – the humane tale of a remarkable woman and forward-thinking educationalist was gently re-enacted; one whose composed fight for national identity was intrinsically linked to her ongoing commitment to female emancipation.

Redgrave’s quietly compassionate delivery held the audience’s unwavering attention as she shifted in turn from reading to actively watching events unfolding on a screen through Cortas’s own pictorial biography. Scenes of normal happy family life were juxtaposed against the backdrop of treaties that emphasised the turmoil and constant military intervention of a region that many never associate as part of the Mediterranean. But it’s this visual picture of a fertile and vibrant land, lapped by the warm waters of that sea, which remained long after I’d left the theatre.