A certain stain on a certain dress belonging to a certain White House intern didn't just get President Clinton impeached. It's inspired a sex comedy in Egypt.
The BBC says Kermal and the Blue Dress is a satire based on the most notorious dress of 1998. The title character is a psychiatrist whose refusal to leave his wife for his seductive assistant (named Monica) leads her to use a stain on her blue dress to accuse him of rape.
The characters and even events may differ, the BBC says, but the references to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal are very clear.
Playwright Faisal Nadar says of Kermal and the Blue Dress that its theme - man's inability to resist seductive woman - is universal, even though Egyptian society tends to tolerate male over female promiscuity.
The actor portraying the psychiatrist Kermal, Yehiar al-Sakarani, even thanked President Clinton for making it possible to discuss sex openly in a conservative society such as Egypt.
That didn't keep the play from posing a political ramification or two, the BBC says. Egyptian censors asked him to change his original title, which the BBC says referred more explicitly to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, in order to protect U.S.-Egyptian relations.
