The Toronto Theatre Review: The Green Line
By Ross
This is 1978 Beirut, we are told. And that there is a line, The Green Line, that separates West Beirut and the East. It’s a line of demarcation during the Lebanese Civil War from 1975 to 1990. One side is predominantly Muslim in West Beirut, and the other in the East is predominantly Christian, controlled by the Lebanese Front. But deep inside the heart of the In Arms Theatre Company + MENA Collective production of The Green Line, another line is drawn, between time and connection, between love and togetherness, between care and homophobia, and we can’t look away like she is being asked to. We want to know more, and care more deeply for the bond that we see grow between two worlds on different sides of an illusory demarcation.
The Green Line, this year’s Buddies in Bad Times Theatre season opener in association with Factory Theatre, is a complex crossing between two spaces of desire. It starts out with poetry, delivered with authority and captive honesty by the two soulful female centers of this hypnotically beautiful creation. Basma Baydoun (“Morine“) as Yara, and Zaynna Khalife (Neptune’s New Canadian Curling Club) as Mona, occupy the stage, standing far across the slab of stone, tilted on an angle, giving off an air of instability and possible destruction.
Designed sharply to great effect by Anahita Dehbonehie (Outside the March’s Rainbow on Mars), with strong lighting by Jareth Li + Kit Norman and sound by Chris Pereira + Heidi Chan, these two engage across a great divide of brokenness and ruin, finding hope and eternal intimacy that feels centuries old. They study side by side, ask the deep questions, share cigarettes, and fevered glances. it’s tender and heartfelt, filled with compassion and unspeakable desire. This is their story, but we also have another, one that unpacks across another split, one that takes a little longer to fully understand its placement on The Green Line, but when the timely picture comes into focus, the journey and unraveling are worth the wait and weight in all those vodka sodas, with a twist of lime, for the foreigner.
“For a place full of war, its surprisingly fun,” a young man says to a drag performer fresh from the stage. It’s not what he expected in Beirut, nor did I, but as these two men, portrayed compassionately by Oshen Aoun (NTSC’s Richard III) as Naseeb/Rami and Waseem Alzer (off-Broadway’s On That Day in Amsterdam) as Fifi/Zidan, a more contemporary, nightlife-infused Beirut comes into focus. But as the drinks are poured and the façades fall away, their dynamic reveals a yearning no less urgent than that of Yara and Mona. This storyline, bedazzled at first in cultural distraction, peels back to show its own vulnerable undercurrents of intimacy and survival. Aoun, navigating the dualities of Naseeb/Rami with authentic force and tenderness, and Alzer, balancing glamour with gravity, ground their scenes in a palpable ache. Yet we feel for all four as we try to piece together the broken pieces from the (somewhat unnecessary) rubble on the stage.
The four actors all find ultimate connection and passion in their dynamic parts, guided with a clever emotional vision seeped in tension and intelligence by playwright and director Makram Ayache, who gifted us with one of my favorite productions of 2023, the superb The Hooves Belonged to the Deer at Tarragon. Like that play, The Green Line finds subtle brilliance and engagement in a complex mound of sand, especially the gifted Baydoun and Khalife who forge a dangerous yet compassionate relationship against all odds. But without the careful unpacking of all their stories and predicaments of love, this production wouldn’t be as memorable, connecting, and heartbreaking.
Running a solid and wonderfully complex 85 minutes with no intermission, The Green Line carries us deep into the wounded heart of a country in conflict and the equally fragile interiors of its characters. A phoenix threads the two storylines, pulsing with different rhythms but echoing the same longing for love, safety, and permanence — something neither war nor marriage can easily destroy, and we feel their dilemma and their hope rise up from the ashes. “We are the builders of homes,” she states in a plea for compassion and recognition, but religion and war are deaf to such ideas, especially when rumors swirl and tempers are ignited.
Searching for a place where intimacy can outlast conflict, The Green Line at Buddies crosses the divide over and over again, to find the safety and connection it, and these characters long for. In Ayache’s writing and staging, trauma and desire drift across the stage like smoke, obliterating but also forceful, demanding to be seen and heard while keeping the poetry and the imagery alive and soaring. “I love this country, even if it breaks me.” A profound quote that represents so much of what is standing firm, albeit angled, in Ayache’s tender, magical, not-to-be-missed The Green Line. It’s a testament to resilience, a complex love letter to Beirut, and a stark reminder of the human cost of division.
