The Dubai drama scene is alive and well, I can happily confirm – and I’m not basing that opinion just on the pantomimes I saw over the holiday period.
I wrote recently of how one expatriate resident, Nikki Schreiber, had set a precedent as a playwright by having her play Cheese staged in London.
Now, another doyenne of the local business media scene is also heading onto the boards. Eithne Treanor, a TV journalist turned media trainer to the UAE executive elite, is starring in a production of Dancing at Lughnasa, the award winning play by the Irish writer Brian Friel that became a Hollywood movie starring Oscar winner Meryl Streep.
Eithne (“say Etna” she says) plays the part of Kate Mundy, the matriarchal figure in a rural Irish family in the 1930s who are made painfully aware of the big bad world outside their remote cottage.
It is a play about social and cultural change, and the effect that can have on indigenous ways of life – a theme perhaps for the Emirates of today.
She is a modest soul, even in her moment of stardom. “I wouldn’t say I have the lead role, except in so far as Meryl Streep also played Kate. Maggie Mundy is a big part, though I’d say she was more chief operating officer of the family to Kate’s CEO,” she says. Executive-speak is clearly a hard thing to shake off.
She also believes that acting techniques can be useful tools for business executives in crisis management situations.
I saw the play in London many years ago, and have to confess I fought back the odd tear. It’s on at the Dubai Community Theatre & Arts Centre in Mall of the Emirates, and shouldn’t be missed.
Moving house. An awful prospect. They say it’s the third most stressful activity a human being can endure, after divorce and the death of a loved one. I can testify to that.
But the time has come when I have to contemplate the reality of an imminent move, and I do so with fear and foreboding.
This time next month the lease expires on the Marina apartment that has been home for the past four years, and I will be in the thick of it. I’m thinking of asking the mobile cardiac unit to block out a few days in early February just to be on standby for me.
The reason for the move, and also the reason I expect it to be even more stressful this time, is Dubai’s economic recovery.
My apartment has changed owners four times in the past year, as successive landlords have made a quick buck by selling the property within months, sometimes weeks, of buying it.
The “flip” side of this, if you will excuse the weak joke, is that I will have to pay substantially more for the next place.
The Marina remains an attractive location, where we have been happy and which is convenient for virtually anywhere in the UAE. Many others think likewise, so competition in the area is fierce, and prices are climbing inexorably.
This is “Expo-euphoria” in action.
Over the next few weeks I shall be at the sharp end of Dubai’s resurgent property boom, in daily contact with all those people – landlords, estate agents, removals men, furniture dealers – that you love to hate.
It will be a unique opportunity to take a snapshot of the emirate’s property market, warts and all.
The thought that I will be able to share it with readers is a form of therapy in itself, and at the moment is about the only straw of hope to clutch.
fkane@thenational.ae
