The present paper is inspired by one of the most acclaimed experimental production that swayed the audience of Alflanager Art Centre, Cairo in September:2001 (Selaiha 2001, 2006). The Egyptian production was titled Too Late. As the cover.of the leaflet indicated, Too Late was an adaptation of August Strindberg's spellbinding, psychological monodrama, The Stronger (1889). However, the inside of the leaflet announced that Alexander Pushkin's little tragedy, Mozart and Salieri(1826) was to join in too. Why did the Russian ghost of Salieri cross the temporal distances that separate his early conception in the first half of the nineteenth century>from his sisterly apparitions in the most famous of Strindberg's “quart d'heurs" (Barry
vil-ix) to join the adapted Iivcs of the two Egyptian female figures of Too Late?, one
wondered as the worlds of the three plays intersected in the dramaturgical horizon ofthe stage. What makes The Stronger and Mozart and Salieri such an intriguing choicefor an inter-textual play? What is the human magnet that draws these two desperate worlds to each other? The answers to these questions are the flesh and bone of the present paper