Qatari 60% tickles funny bones of Doha audience

A Hilarious play Qatari 60% had the audience splitting their sides with laughter at Qatar National Theater on Sunday. The play is written by poets Abdulrahim al Siddiqi and Tayseer Abdullah, and produced by Falih Fayez. The play is the fourth theatrical work written jointly by the duo.

Qatari artiste Abdulaziz Jassim played the lead role in the live comical show featuring Kuwaiti artistes Hassan al Ballam and Rima al Fudala as well as other Qatari actors like Rim Abdulrahman, Youssef Khalil, Mohamed Anwar, Rashid Saad, Abdulhamid al Sharshani, Mohamed al Sunni, Sara Hassan, Nasser al Ansari and Ali.

The play also featured two prominent Arab journalists Khalifa al Rumayhi and Ibtisam al Hubayl who acted as journalists in the show. Qatari 60% satirises the trend among traders and service providers to hike prices in Qatar and other Gulf countries when the governments increased workers’ salaries.

The phenomenon prompted the respective governments to take steps protect the consumer from the attendant price hikes. 

The play dares to deeply x-ray societal behaviour in the Gulf region. It boldly discusses the behaviours of the agencies engaged in recruiting maids and the fish market as well as the role of Twitter which has become an effective tool used by the residents to expose the greedy people who try to gobble up much of the salary increases.

The actors depicted the traders and service providers as people who suck the blood of employees cheered by the increases in their salaries.

Artiste Abdulaziz Jassim said: “The play offers a social comedy that makes use of the new literary ideas and innovations to expose the profiteering by some greedy traders. Profiteers among the traders invariably raise the prices of commodities whenever the governments in the Gulf countries give relief to their employees by hiking salaries. The sole beneficiaries of the price rise are these greedy traders, not the employees.” Abdulaziz added that the play discusses the question of whether the population will unite to act against the greedy traders who increase the prices of their goods to fill their own coffers.

source: Qatar Tribune

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