Egyptian critics denounced popular blackface comedians during the 1919 nationalist crisis

Evidence

Osman `abd al-Basit was and remains a contested figure. Many critics contemporary to the times detested the rawness of the character’s language and the bawdiness of the dialogues, particularly those between Osman and his wife, Umm Ahmad, or between Osman and the foreign women he attempts to chat up. One critic attacked the nationalistic sincerity of audiences who laughed at the antics of the blackfaced al-Kassär and his chief stage rival, Najïb al-Rihanï, when the nation was facing the Milner mission and the antipathy of Field Marshal Allenby, and went further to condemn the legendary Sayyid Darwïsh for his participation in the theater of these vaudeville comedians. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 931

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on nationalist cultural gatekeeping and ‘respectable’ versus popular culture in colonial-era nationalist movements — parallels debates in Irish literary revival and Indian anti-colonial theater.
• QUESTION: What exactly was the Milner mission and how did it polarize Egyptian cultural production in this period?