Les larmes d’OEdipe by Wajdi Mouawad (review)

silence et la malédiction” (309). Between her immediate reply chastising her son and her eventual reply to his inquiry, we read Mabrouka’s great-grandmother Sihème’s account of her life as told to her daughter, Gamra; Gamra’s account to her daughter, Zina; and Zina’s to Mabrouka. A three-generation history of French colonialism in Algeria and Tunisia and the resistance to it forms the backdrop to their lives, as does the immaturity of nearly all of the males they have to deal with. The men wage war incompetently, force women to marry them or their sons, betray their wives, stand on their pride, and generally make a mess of things. In contrast, in the city of La Calle (now officially Kalla), Sihème founded the impressively-named Cité des femmes affranchies et autarciques de l’Est algérien, whose tradition of educating women has strengthened her female descendants. Each has educated her daughter(s) to be literate in Arabic and French, to work in the arts (including restoring and forging ancient manuscripts and mosaics), to negotiate successfully with the men they have to deal with, and to hide their skills from those men as necessary. The detached way in which each woman recounts her life suggests a picaresque tale, as the betrayals, murders, and escapes are narrated rapidly and simply, with little emotion. The adventures are bizarre, funny, or sad, but they all show men asserting power, usually unwisely and unfairly, and women finding ways to survive and to educate their daughters. Mabrouka is furious with Massyre, her only son, because he has deserted Tunisia for France to become a “historien qui ne sait plus quoi faire du passé” (12) when he could have stayed in la Montagne Blanche (officially Nefza), where as a teenager he had been the best local butcher of goats.Although he thought that she was illiterate, she has read his memoir and insists that his account of his early years is inaccurate. She clearly feels that he is as useless as most of the men in her life, and now at age 75 she looks forward to dying and having an “explication sans concession avec Allah sur le renoncement, le silence et le sacrifice” (280), which have largely constituted her life and those of most of the other women she has known. Bridging history and fiction, the novel instructs and entertains. College of San Mateo (CA) Susan Petit Mouawad,Wajdi. Les larmes d’Œdipe.Arles: Actes Sud, 2016. ISBN 978-2-330-060374 . Pp. 41. Chillingly haunting winds and piercing bellows from grief-stricken souls grip the audience and summon it to the community of suffering and healing created by Wajdi Mouawad in his performance of Les larmes d’Œdipe (Théâtre national de Chaillot, juin 2016), the final installment of his series consecrated to the tragedies of Sophocles. In the performance, Mouawad incorporates music as a central element in his mise-ensc ène, which contributes to the play’s success, but whose absence causes the written text to fall flat. The performance boasts a mimetic, cathartic experience for characters and 216 FRENCH REVIEW 91.4 Reviews 217 audience alike that reveals the timelessness and universality of suffering and of the tragedy that clutches daily life, whereas the text allows the reader to remain distant. Antigone and Oedipus traverse time to the night of 6 Dec. 2008 in Athens, where Oedipus finds a final resting place in the ruins of an old theater. They are joined by a man who, anguished by the news of the tragedy that has unfolded in the streets, also seeks refuge. Police officers shot fifteen-year-old Alexander Grigoropoulos. Athens riots in the streets while the symbolic Chorus Head retreats to the old arena to sing and cry out against injustice, where he is united with Oedipus and the tragedies of distant generations. The ruins of the old theater become a place of testimony where the stories of Oedipus and Andréas can be told, heard, and shared again—an obvious symbol of the role of theater and one that is carried out beautifully and masterfully in the text and production of Les larmes d...