'King Lear' brings Yehia El-Fakharani back to the stage

The stage is set

Such was the occasion that Egypt's Ministry of Culture dispensed with its usual budgetary limitations and granted the veteran actor an unprecedented request: a fully open production budget for his return to the National Theatre. As director Ayman El-Shaywi later confirmed, the result is the most lavish production in the institution's history. Indeed, the play's grandeur is self-evident.

At the core of director Shady Sorour's vision is a bold reliance on visual spectacle: digital scenography and animated projections by Hamdi Attia move the audience from regal interiors to wind-swept plains. Projection mapping electrifies the battle scenes, while the iconic storm—Lear's descent into madness—unfolds with daring visual ambition, with 40 cast members choreographed by Diaa Shafik into fluid, cinematic tableaux that give it a relentless kinetic rhythm.

Costume designer Ola Ali provides a rich palette of colours and fabrics which help shift tones and convey social hierarchy. Sculptural elements by Mustafa El-Tahami and Mustafa Fakhri add depth and symbolism to the stage, while evocative lighting by Mahmoud El-Husseiny (Kajo) shades the psychological arc of the narrative.

Ahmed El-Nasser's original score offers a musical backbone that occasionally overwhelms key dialogue, particularly in scenes of high emotional intensity (such as Gloucester's blinding, played with bruising solemnity by Tarek Dessouki). Even the curtain call carries the air of a theatrical festival, as cast portraits appear on the digital backdrop as performers take their bows. At the centre of it all: Yehia El-Fakharani.

Poise and chaos

Showing signs of age and tiredness that he never seeks to hide, El-Fakharani instead leans into fragility, folding his physical limits into the role with breathtaking discipline. Every moment of pause, every slow ascent from a chair, feels not like limitation but embodiment. El-Fakharani's Lear—weary, raging, aching—shifts seamlessly between majestic poise and chaotic unravelling.

In one unforgettably localised moment, the king lashes out at his ungrateful daughter, not in solemn Shakespearean cadence but with a sharp Egyptian inflexion—an audacious yet pitch-perfect adaptation.

Though Shakespeare's original five-act structure was compressed into two, the play retained its essence, aided by El-Fakharani's continued fidelity to Dr. Fatma Moussa's celebrated Arabic translation. Chosen after a six-month comparative review, the text remains unaltered "to the letter," El-Fakharani says—a choice that mirrors his reverence for classical form.

Some lines ring with unexpected resonance. "Woe to those who delay repentance," Lear murmurs, as if conscious of his own irreversible descent. "My sins are made lighter by the wrongs others have done to me." When the Fool quips: "If you do not learn to bend with the wind, the cold will strike you," the line lands with metatheatrical wit—spoken by a cast weathering not only a storm on-stage, but time itself.

As the lights rise, the audience erupts not with polite applause but with fervent, affectionate chants. "We love you, maestro!" they cry. This is spontaneous homage not just to a performance but to a life's work. For in this King Lear, Yehia El-Fakharani does not merely revisit a role; he reclaims a throne, one unshaken by time.

Mastering the trade

Veteran journalist Mofid Fawzi once offered Yehia El-Fakharani a simple affirmation: "I believe you." It struck at the core of El-Fakharani's artistry. For decades, audiences have trusted him not merely to portray truth but to inhabit it—to disappear into a role so completely that 'character' and 'self' become indistinguishable.

El-Fakharani breathes life into his characters from within. For him, acting is far more than a job. His wife, the writer Lamis Gaber, said he once arrived on set before the studio had even opened—driven not by professionalism but by a love that has animated a career of extraordinary breadth, earning him early acclaim in radio and theatre, before television enshrined him in the Egyptian and Arab cultural memory.

His screen breakthrough came with Siyam Siyam in the early 1980s, but it was Layali El-Helmeya (Al-Helmaya Nights), an Egyptian TV series that ran from 1987 to 2016, that sealed his legend. Initially considered for the role of the rustic mayor Suleiman Ghanem (ultimately played by Salah El-Saadany), El-Fakharani insisted on portraying the Pasha, Selim El-Badry.

Scriptwriter Osama Anwar Okasha was sceptical, but the performance that emerged—cool, brooding, and quietly tormented—became one of the most iconic in Arab TV history. El-Fakharani stood out not with matinee glamour or screen-idol charm. His power lay in an 'everyman' quality and understated magnetism that mixed gravitas with gentle mischief. Softened by kindness, his features often disqualified him from villainous roles, but when he did embrace the dark side, the results were searing—as in Deadly Jealousy, the breakout film of Atef El-Tayeb.

Fixture of authenticity

His film career, though selective, was no less impactful. After a cautious debut in Ah Ya Leil Ya Zaman (1977), he navigated the crowded 1980s-90s cinema landscape with surgical precision, with box-office success a distant second to storytelling. Among his most memorable performances was in Gone With No Return, his second collaboration with director Mohamed Khan.

Now recognised as one of Egypt's greatest films, it was a lyrical adaptation of H.E. Bates' The Purple Plain and captured Egyptian cinematic realism at its most tender and unadorned. El-Fakharani not only proposed the script (written by Asem Tawfik, who had introduced him to audiences in Days of Joy) but embodied its essence. Khan opened the film with a line that became its manifesto: "The characters may be fictional, but the places are undeniably real."

Initially rejected by a slate of A-list actors, including Farid Shawqi (who later reversed his decision and praised the work), the film was shot in just four weeks in a village near Benha. As legend has it, the abundance of on-screen food scenes led Khan, Shawqi, and El-Fakharani to emerge visibly heavier by the final take.

Born on 7 April 1945, El-Fakharani trained as a physician and worked in the broadcast medical department of Egyptian Radio and Television before surrendering to the vocation that had claimed his heart. Even as cultural trends shifted over time, he remained a fixture of authenticity—anchored in craft, humility, and emotional truth.

Screenwriter Youssef Maati recalled how El-Fakharani once stepped out for a meal but could not get out of his car owing to a spontaneous mob that gathered and clambered around his vehicle, hoping not for a selfie but to express their admiration. Soon, the crowd lifted his car up off the ground as a sign of honour and affection. Such moments are not born of celebrity but of earned, enduring, and unrepayable love. Like Lear, his legacy will echo far beyond the curtain fall.