At about midnight the dance floor starts to fill, with a motley crowd of revellers shuffling to house music. There’s a young man in skinny trousers and oversized cowboy boots capering about, while a pair of poker-faced young women, dressed in black crop tops and sunglasses, bop with modish nonchalance.
It’s much like any nightclub you might imagine, except for the bouncers who prowl the premises looking for any untoward behaviour. In Saudi Arabia’s first permanent nightclub, this could include adding alcohol to the mocktails served at the bar. Even though alcohol remains forbidden in the country, it is regularly smuggled into parties as rumours persist that it will eventually be allowed in tourist resorts.
Away from the dancing, the Saudi DJ tarek anTabi is getting ready for his set. For years the DJ, who got into music when he was living in the US, would leave his ultra-conservative country at any opportunity to perform abroad. But now he’s playing to a home crowd. “It means the world to me,” he says.
It’s the job of Hessah, the Saudi hostess at the Beast House club, to greet the guests. In Riyadh, where men and women could not mix freely until a few years ago, the nightclub that opened this month feels like a breakthrough. “We’ve always been like this,” she says, wearing a tank top. “Now we can be public about it.”
The fact that parties used to be illegal did not stop young Saudis from hosting them in private residences. But there was always the chance that the night would end in a police raid or an intervention by mutawas, the zealous morality enforcers who roamed the cities.
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Now the roles have reversed. The morality police are gone, swept away in a government plan to overhaul the oil-reliant economy while easing the strict Islamic restrictions that defined public life. In their place, cinemas, concerts, and now nightclubs are springing up. Clerics and others who criticise the government are thrown in jail, while parties and concerts are encouraged.
Beast House, in Riyadh’s artistic Jax District, where warehouses host music venues and art galleries, is a venture by MDLBeast, a company backed by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund that has come to prominence with annual music festivals and raves since 2019. The sovereign Public Investment Fund (PIF) is chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de-facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, and is essentially in charge of steering its economic and social change.
It is involved in everything from trillion-pound gigaprojects such as The Line, a futuristic city dismissed as a fantasy by sceptics, to tourist resorts, electric vehicles, housing and sports. It owns the Premier League’s Newcastle United football club and has partly taken over professional golf, while investing $38 billion to become a video gaming hub.
And now clubbing. “This is us, building happiness, the economy, for us. This is us, creating joy and entertainment for us,” said Ahmad Alammary, MDLBeast’s chief creative officer.
This latest venture ticks off all boxes for the PIF, which wants to attract tourists and diversify the economy beyond oil exports. Its ventures are often controversial, and have garnered the country, where dissidents are locked up, a reputation for entertainment and sportswashing. The government has, to be sure, invested considerably in shoring up its image abroad, particularly after state agents murdered Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
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But as far as the crown prince is concerned, the strategy is aimed primarily at Saudis. Mohammed, 38, is both an autocrat and a populist. He welcomes debate from his advisers, people who know him say, but shows little tolerance for dissidents, having sidelined his opponents in the royal family, the conservative clergy and influential oligarchs.
He wants — and needs — to deliver to the young demographic that makes up the majority of Saudi Arabia’s population before he ascends the throne. They want jobs, homes and entertainment, and at Beast House, one will be hard pressed to find someone critical of the prince. “MBS is our love,” blurts a woman, who gave her name as Nouf, when asked about the changes. Nouf, who came to the club with her friend, said she had been thinking of leaving the country before the reforms started taking off in 2016.
“It’s a new life, we’re born again,” she says. “Especially as women.”
It is not all rosy though. The reforms have upended the old social contract in the country, where Saudis could rely on cradle-to-the-grave welfare. The government introduced a 15 per cent VAT, shrank subsidies, and is encouraging Saudis to enter the private sector — in part with laws that reserve many industries for Saudis only, or place quotas on Saudi hires.
Unemployment is at record lows, but many complain that their salaries have not kept up with prices. Offerings such as Beast House, where guests must pay about £1,900 — which amounts to about two months’ pay on a minimum wage salary — for the lowest annual membership up to about £2,800 for the highest, suggest that fully enjoying the new Saudi Arabia might be beyond many residents’ means. “It’s pricey,” complains Mesfer, a young investment analyst who took a break from dancing in Beast House to sit on a couch. “Leisure is expensive.”
