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International Arrivals: We Live in Cairo and Bad Kreyòl

Two shows take audiences into the Arab Spring and the Haitian American experience.

As with many a project that’s been in development for over a decade, especially a new musical from new writers, you can sense the Lazours’ mad rush to get everything they want onto the page initially, as well as the toothiness that sets in after too many rounds of workshops and revisions ( We Live in Cairo was at ART back in 2019 and has moved through a bevy of other developmental programs). The pressure of events after Mubarak’s resignation — a transitional government leads to an election won by the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, followed by military intervention — drives the characters apart ideologically, though that division reveals in them a greater range of emotion than pure revolutionary dreaming. Pita introduces Simone to a woman named Lovelie (Fedna Jacquet), a former sex worker who has started a business sewing with the support of an NGO — any mention of NGOs makes Gigi roll her eyes — but she then experiences harassment from a businessman associated with the group.

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