The scene is the countryside outside ancient Baghdad. “Ali Baba and the Thieves” is one of the stories that Queen Scheherazade tells the King to save her life during the 1001 Nights….
Ali is a poor woodcutter who is out in the hills with his sons and their friend Ben when they overhear a band of slightly peculiar robbers hiding their treasure in a secret cave. After the thieves depart, Ali & co take a little of the treasure back home with them to their village of Cut al Sorenee. There, Ali’s greedy brother Kassam finds out about it and is determined to steal the treasure for himself, while the villagers conspire to play a trick on Ben and Kassam’s daughter Bea who spend all their time arguing with each other, trying to get them to fall in love instead.
Kassam accidentally gets trapped in the cave, and the villagers set out to rescue him, but not before Kassam’s clever servant Maria disguises herself as “Mario” in order to protect Ali’s rather clumsy and absent-minded son Oli, who she rather likes!
Will they free Kassam from the cave? Will Bea and Ben sort out their differences as the villagers hope, or will the trick backfire. Will Maria be found out? What will happen between her and Oli? And what will the thieves do about the fact that their treasure seems to be going missing?
Follow their adventures, and find out for yourselves…
With thanks (as ever) to Andrew Dubock for the filming and editing – here is the video of our 2025 performance, “Much Ado About Ali Baba”