Brighton Year-Round 2026
Arabian Nights
New Venture Theatre, Brighton
Genre: Adaptation, classical, Comedy, Costume, Dark Comedy, Drama, Fringe Theatre, Live Music, Puppetry, Theatre, Translation
Venue: New Venture Theatre Upstairs
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
Dominic Cooke’s Arabian Nights opens at New Venture Theatre directed by Diane Robinson till 28 March. It’s brave, bold and bendy. Not in ways you’d think though.
A beguiling, thoroughly diverting start to spring, it’s a delight.
Review
Just as Chichester launched an outstanding The BFG, a panto-time play earlier this month, it seems early spring is a fantastic time to rethink festive seasons. One celebrating rebirth. So Dominic Cooke’s Arabian Nights opens at New Venture Theatre directed by Diane Robinson till 28 March. It’s brave, bold and bendy. Not in ways you’d think though.
Arabian Nights or Al Layla Wa-Layla, was famously inspired by a young woman keeping one step of a beheading. Nevertheless they’ve inspired many versions of Shaharazad’s ingenuity. Written for the RSC, Cooke (until 2013 Artistic Director of the Royal Court amongst other things) premiered it in December 2009. Whilst not as radical as Hannah Khalil Tamasha’s Women of the Arabian Nights at the Globe’s Wanamaker in December 2022 (Shaharazade was fed new stories by the other anxious women), its reach is similar: the power of storytelling to transport, bewitch, transform, humanise.
Sophoulla Gibson leads as a sassy, slinky Shahrazad (and at one point she’s a talking bird with a mask), who announces to her father the Vizier (Andy Grant, all paternal anxiety and duty) and her younger sister Dinarzad (Maria Sturt, also a beautiful soloist, one of several) that she’s going to marry the good ruler Shahrayar turned to the bad. Gibson’s onstage almost throughout, multi-roling (even as a mule once) and her Shahrazad is seriously magnetic and believable: bold, bright-witted and cheeky: you could imagine Gibson in this mode playing the schemer in Restoration or Sheridan. Gibson compels attention. Like Sturt, Gibson sings raptly (a trio with Sturt, Lizzie Kroon and Sapphire Samiullah opens the show) and the ensemble return to snatches of song throughout.
After executing his adulterous wife Shahrayar vows to marry a young woman each day and behead her the following morning. 1001 have gone to their deaths; the country is terrorised. Shahrazad thinks to stop it with storytelling and despite entreaties gets Chris Phipps’ querulous Shahrayar to agree: and to bring sister Dinarzad to wake her up before dawn to tell a story. Phipps seems destined to be regal: he’s the fair-minded if exasperated king in the (fifth) Story of the Wife Who Wouldn’t Eat. Sturt proves winning as Dinarzad, lending a feedback-loop of joy to her elder sister’s resolute character: more pragmatic-seeming yet courageous.
Selecting six tales with the perilous framing of every night, Cooke doesn’t deploy the traditional cliff-hanger: where Shahrazad will only complete the story the following night before embarking on another with a similar outcome. Each are framed with Phipps’ sceptical and querulous responses slowly giving way to wonder and imploring.
Sam Razavi proves outstanding even in this ensemble as the star of the first, Ali Baba (and the forty thieves), as well as playing Ali’s mean brother Kasim, and Haroun in the fifth, The Story of the Wife who wouldn’t Eat. Vocally and gesturally he grounds action and rationale. He’s funny from his character outwards, wholly believable.
Ali Baba’s clever, but the cleverest is slave-girl Marjanah (Achala Mathews) who discovers the plot against him and does something unexpected to the thieves’ Captain (a striding Tom Bryant) having also poured boiling… well you’ll see. Exuding quick-witted resource, Matthews makes a compelling Marjanah dancing her way to freedom with a sword. She’s stoic too as the Youngest Sister in the last tale (Story of the Envious Sisters) and bewitching bride Armina.
Sapphire Samiullah’s big role comes with the third tale, one of the three best-known (with Ali Baba and Aladdin, the latter not selected): Es Sindibad the Sailor. Samiullah’s role here is to tell a tale within a tale, to the rapt other Sinbad (a puppet worked by Samiullah). Elizabeth Kroon’s querulous wife to Ali Baba, and Ghoul in The Wife Who Wouldn’t Eat are both foils. As Parizade though in The Envious Sisters she comes into her own as unsuspecting daughter of the youngest: Kroon brings poise and wit to Parizade. Here she sparks off her brothers Finlay Brooks (bold Perviz) and thoughtful Bahman (Tom Bryant) – whose roles as a dashing if fiendish Captain in Ali Baba, and Little Beggar in the next undergoing a miracle, are rewarded: with a fart. Bryant’s the unfortunate lead in the fourth tale: How Abu Hassan Broke Wind. Bryant is good though at surprise, hurt and crestfallen dignity, which works in all three roles. Brooks as the unfortunate Tailor in The Little Beggar (the title character everyone thinks they’ve killed) exudes confusion and fluster, and as another ill-used Tailor in Ali Baba.
Dramatist and sound designer Ollie Wilson King always stamps a presence in small roles. Here, as Executioner eternally deferred, or the Cook in The Wife Who Wouldn’t Eat. Yasmine Bendimered as Eldest Sister in that tale relishes a gruesome envy with sis Samiullah. A brief Queen at the outset, Bendimered’s explosive as the hapless Tailor’s Wife, and as the Rukh, a giant bird (nods later to the designers of this) she whoops with her height, gleefully swirling the stage with abandon. Elaine Larkin enjoys dark roles; as coveting Kasim’s wife in Ali Baba, herself cunning, the hapless Mother in a small role in the Abu Hassan. And most mordant of all the sardonic Dervish warning each of three siblings in The Envious Sisters. With the grace to be pleasantly surprised by Parizade’s cunning.
Simon Glazier’s subtle and shapeshifting set – brick-red, yellow flecked with gold dominates the Upstairs: stage right is a red-earth-coloured courtyard traced over with a colonnade. Opposite a raised dais and bed couches the storytelling and story-told trio. Props though are occasionally dazzling and very funny. There’s a coup with a sprouting tree and waterfall spurt at the end. Dazzling costumes designed by Lindsay Midali are sloughed and donned with a dizzying flick. There’s some tenebrous indeed magical light design from Strat Mastoris: with rippling reflections and sidelights. And there’s Anita Sullivan Fearnside’s clever mini-me puppetry designs and creation, embracing additional masks and wings throughout; with the horse mask crafted by David and Katie Brownings.
With original music by Liz Ryder-Weldon the most insistent rhythm is authentic live drumming and percussion performed by Dr Leon Baruah downstage, discreetly adding zings at beheadings, sword-thrusts and much else. Alice Healey’s choreography is essential: more challenging than words are the sinewy moves that a ravelling story demands. Crossed between movement theatre and acting, there’s humour, darkness, farce, and poise. Tone’s enormously tricky here, and balancing naïve with playful archness, even simplicity, is a bit like Mozart: too easy for children, too complicated for grown-ups. It’s to the company’s credit they manage so much magic with truth
In all, Robinson’s managed the still-impossible: to bring an ensemble of fourteen to sashay through a cross between panto, joyous storytelling and serious drama. With singing, dance and live instrumental playing, it’s hugely ambitious and comes off pretty flawlessly. A beguiling, thoroughly diverting start to spring, it’s a delight.
Production Manager Tamsin Mastoris, Stage Manager, Moon Berglind, ASM Anne-Marie Harrison, Natalie Sacks-Hammond, Claudia Ezraeelian
Set Build Simon Glazier, George Walter,. Sa Deards, Sean McGrath, Ally McDermott, Wiktoria Piatowska
Set Painting Simon Glazier, Annie Sheppard, Anita Sullivan Fearnside
Puppets Anita Sullivan Fearnside, Special Props David and Katie Brownings
Lighting Designer Strat Mastoris, Lighting Operators Sabrina Giles, Leah Mooney, Eli Acedo Pozo
Sound & Projection Designer Chris Dent /Sound Operator Chris Dent, Sean McGrath, Jim Prior
Costume Design Lindsay Midali, Costume made by Lindsay Midali, and Jackie Jones, with thanks to Achala Matthews and Gladrags, Costume Assistance Lindsay Midali, Katie Brownings, Joana Joy Salter, Carol Croft, Eleanor May
Poster & Programme Designer Tamsin Mastoris
Publicity Elysa Hyde
Photography Strat Mastoris, Health and Safety Ian Black.
Thanks to Annie Sheppard, Anne-Marie Harrison, Brian, Liz Ryder-Weldon and Leon Baruah for the music, Neet, Judith (props), Alice Healey (choreography), David and Katie Brownings (horse head), Chris Horlock (facial hair), Sarah Davies for puppetry assistance, Carrie for tech, Moon Berlgind, Tamsin Mastoris. And FOH.
