I felt right at home watching the hilariously raw play that is Najee Tannous’ and Antony Makhlouf’s PICKLED. Located at Belvoir Street’s intimate theatre at Surry Hills, PICKLED follows the story of two queer Lebanese brothers, Sammy and Yousif, who reunite after their mother’s untimely death. Their only inheritance is a jar of pickles, serving as the centrepiece of the play: a symbol of bittersweet love, culture, and the fragility of family.
We witness the rekindling of brotherhood starting the night before the funeral, where the brothers bicker and reflect on a blend of reminiscent and regretful memories. When the play moves to the following day, it culminates in a heartwarming camaraderie between the actors and audience, offering comfort to those seeking solace through storytelling, whether queer, ethnic or anyone in need of a tear streaked laugh.
We begin…
Laid out diagonally in the middle of the room is a wooden table, a 90s-style television in front of it, and a kitchenette with a barely working kettle behind it. The unavoidable bulked-up jar of pickles sits at the centre of the table.
Tensions are high when Yousif visits Sammy from Canberra to help organise the funeral. Understandable, considering they haven’t seen each other for ten years. Whilst they catch up, Yousif asks why he’s not allowed to eat a pickle from the jar, While Sammy stresses that it’s all their late mother left them. Queue Yousif’s first joke of the night: “she’s such a fucking bitch.”
As the room dims and the lights fade, we are transported to flashbacks of their childhood. Tannous (Sammy) and Makhlouf (Yousif) seamlessly alternate portraying their mother, Rima, who migrated from Beirut. It was a testament to their acting abilities, leaving no doubt about which character they were portraying. Familiar herbal cigarette smoke and intense Arabic fills the room, as Rima demands Sammy reveal Yousif’s whereabouts — he is at the park exploring his sexuality.
It was like looking into a mirror at my Lebanese parents. I knew every Arabic phrase by heart, with favourites like get out of my face (Ikhruj min wajhi), you’re lying (inta kidhab) and shut your mouth (sid boozak.)
Nevertheless, the shame and anxiety of facing a parent who struggles with their child’s differences was something I felt to my core. Ethnic or not, confronting your identity can be the hardest thing you do. What’s even harder is sharing it with the people you love most.
Continuing on…
The play perfectly weaves humour with the battle of reconciling their sexualities and the desire to please their mother since childhood, along with the complex emotions from years of separation. It strikes the perfect balance, guiding you to laugh at just the right moments and pause to absorb the intensity of their grief.
The exploration of the two gay brothers’ contrasting experiences stood out in the play: one who stayed behind, struggling with the emotional turmoil of concealed queerness in the presence of a loving but resistant mother, and the other who left, finding freedom and joy in his identity, but ultimately disconnected from those who love him most. When we are confronted with their starkly opposing choices, there’s no need to indulge in what could have been.
The pickle jar is more than a symbol of their late mother. As the brothers grapple with it, one finding it stupid, the other holding onto it as his life force, it renders the brothers’ fragile relationship tangible. Here we are, look at us, look at how easy we can break.
The finale…
The creativity of this play is unmatched, inviting audience members to show off their improv skills at the funeral, and suit the show’s humour exactly. I was watching, thinking ‘“surely they’ve planned this?” Nope. The girl who said their mother stole all the baskets at Woolies and the guy who said they owed him $500 for the photobooth were not professional actors.
PICKLED is a ‘raw’ and unapologetic story crafted to both hilariously confront and inspire audiences. It’s a story about embracing your ‘contemporary queerness,’ not in spite of, but because of your culture; ‘my queerness is Arab,’ as Tannous beautifully puts it.
Anyone with a Middle Eastern background will resonate with the play in some way, whether it’s rediscovering a love for Laughing Cow cheese and Lebanese bread, experiencing the daily haze of cigarette smoke, or appreciating the sacrifices our parents made to escape the civil war and make a life for us, PICKLED is a masterpiece you will never forget.
The interview…
As a Lebanese girl growing up in the White-suburbia of Castle Hill, finding authentic Lebanese representation in art has been challenging. However, after speaking to actor Najee Tannous, I can confidently say that PICKLED beautifully showcases the complex intertwining of culture and queerness, healing the soul one pickle at a time.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Lebanese-French actor Najee Tannous, who plays Sammy, and co-created the play’s riveting concept. He shared his cultural inspirations, the importance of representation, and the healing process initiated through “unapologetic storytelling.”
What was the inspiration behind the jar of pickles?
“The idea emerged during COVID when everyone was locked up, and there were a lot of human relationships that were isolated. It prompted my fascination with how people react to death and what it brings to the surface, especially when Arab families fight over inheritance and what belongs to them and what belongs to me.
And introspective, the idea of inheritance took more of a symbolic and quirky twist. It made me contemplate when my parents passed; what will our inheritance be? Will it be a house? Will it be a Centrelink debt? Will it be like a 1992 Toyota Camry?
And then I thought, could you imagine? Because my grandmother has a fridge and she loves pickling. And I was like, could you imagine if it was like a single jar of pickles? It’s both phallic and uninspiring and somehow fitting.
PICKLED became a love letter between what it meant to be Arab and what it actually meant to be queer. And the message of preserving one’s essence about cultural lineage and a person of colour, it became about how we coexisted between one’s identity and one’s cultural bloodline.
Often we find ourselves conflicted about how to preserve our history whilst we navigate this Western life, and I’ve found that that kind of access has been really challenging for people, especially second generation and third generational migrants.”
Did you feel apprehensive or nervous creating a play that intertwines your traditional Lebanese culture with ‘contemporary queerness?’
“Yeah. It’s really interesting, because I think what prevails at the front of everything that I’ve done and created is all about lived experience, and it’s all about truth telling. I’ve always said that the most critical part of creating anything is that you have the ability to pave the way for someone else to come forward to also do the same.
And I think it to myself, when I was growing up in Western Sydney, I was just a little boy who had big dreams of working in entertainment. That’s all I ever wanted to do. And I thought, I don’t see myself in anything. I don’t see myself on TV. I don’t hear myself on the radio, and I felt like I was really out of my depth.
To see cultural representation is such a critical aspect of the fabric that we consider Australian. Because at the end of the day, it’s a collective identity. And obviously, I often feel very petrified when I’m dealing with culture and queerness.
But in a strange way, they actually quite inherit each other. Because my queerness isn’t white, my queerness is Arab. I’m an Arab queer. So for me, I have to represent that community and say, we actually exist, you know?
I think we’ve often struggled with being queer and navigating what Arabness actually means. And I guess to build on that without trying to stereotype, is that I was really fueled by my family’s belief that boys don’t cry. And I struggled as a child to reconcile what my vulnerabilities and my feelings were with the expectations of being Arab and masculine. I think one of the greatest challenges that I face in creating the work is trying to be as authentic as possible. And that’s facilitated a sense of healing, because I’ve been able to confront those ideologies not only for me, but for our community.
When you watch PICKLED, you will see yourself. If you resonate with anything that’s Arab, or even ethnic, when you see the work, you’ll go, that’s me, that’s my family. And you don’t have to be queer to know that.”
You interrogate your culture, family and queerness. How do you balance the act of both challenging and appreciating these aspects of your identity?
“I’ve been burdened with the responsibility to authentically use the truth as a weapon to disarm the collective stereotypes and the cliches that surround what I call the Arab manosphere.
It’s kind of like this wealthy expectation of how an Arab behaves. And I feel like I have the responsibility to use the truth to weaponise and to disarm those ideologies. And I think the balance becomes increasingly important as we keep moving forward with presenting this work, because it’s a rendering of the complexities, and highlighting the struggle for things like self-acceptance.
Those notions become really vulnerable and really beautiful. It’s a way to connect to our community, because we’ve all faced trauma, we’ve all faced tribulations and challenges within our family, but more often than not, these become taboo and we don’t talk about them. PICKLED is a way of navigating the narrative, and opening the conversation.”
Has making this play taught you new things about yourself or your family that you didn’t know of before?
“Creating work is a healing process. It’s innate to any cultural work. And often than not, when I’m creating work, I try to avoid something called porn trauma. It’s making porn out of trauma. And it’s sellable.
Most of our communities, particularly white communities, like to consume trauma porn all the time because they feel like they’re supporting a diaspora. But they’re not. What they’re doing is propelling negative connotations.
And PICKLED is really about celebrating. It’s about celebrating these complex dynamics.
The thing is, there was a different version of the show, called Carpet Stories. It was the first time my mum saw me and my queerness on stage. That was a really difficult moment because my mum’s never seen her son be gay on stage.
And so she came up to me after the show, she hugged me, and she cried. Because she got to see herself, and the way that her behaviour and her ability to accept and navigate has an actual influence.
My mum struggled when I first came out, because she didn’t know how to navigate things. She described me coming out as [being] like fine china breaking, and [being] unable to put it back together again. I think it’s a really beautiful way to sum up the indoctrination of our parents’ generation, they’ve been under this conservative spell, and this idealism of what life and family should look like. And when the things that they idolise don’t go to plan, they don’t have the tools to cope.
Queerness isn’t even a term that exists in my mum’s vocabulary, so the show became a healing conversation between me and my mum. It’s made the relationship between my mother and I really strong. It opened up a conversation where she saw the rest of the community celebrating me, and she felt like I’m okay. It’s okay, because look at all these people standing and clapping for my son, telling his story.
Ultimately, it’s been really healing, and I’ve been unapologetic in this process of just telling a real, raw and authentic story.”
Co-created by Najee Tannous, Antony Makhlouf, Francesco Pelli, May Yousif, and Hayden Tonazzi, PICKLED is showing at Belvoir St Theatre from August 20 to September 8, 2024.
