A faded mural of Saddam Hussein looms large as the play opens on a scene of two US marines (Patrick Gibson and Arinzé Kene) taunting a Bengal tiger (Kathryn Hunter) as she prowls and curses from behind the railings of Baghdad Zoo, writes Frankie Jenner.
Based on a true incident from 2003, the starving tiger is shot after mauling off one of the marine’s hands. A stubbornly resistant blood bag aside, which Hunter navigated with aplomb, this arresting opening scene sets the tone for Rajiv Joseph’s darkly comic and multi-layered confrontation of the absurdity and catastrophic toll of war.
Hunter inhabits the role of the tiger with compelling magnetism, even more remarkable given she stepped into the role less than a week before the opening night due to David Threlfall’s illness and subsequent withdrawal from the production. Hunter’s tiger embodies both a comic narrator and roving witness to moral decay; ghosts multiply as the play goes on and become increasingly bound together in ways that none of them can fully reckon with or comprehend.
Musa (Ammar Haj Ahmad) embodies this tragedy most strikingly; an Iraqi interpreter caught between his people and the demands of the occupying American forces. Consumed by the guilt of his past, he struggles to manage conflicting loyalties—”I am not the kind of person that does this,” he pleads, “I am an artist. I am a gardener.” As the programme notes remind us, most interpreters were not professionally trained—they were taxi drivers, teachers, doctors and students.
Hala Omran brought exceptional depth to her performance as an Iraqi woman/ leper, carving out a profound and arresting moment of stillness through an Arabic lament, her voice sharply cutting through the echoes of the play’s ghosts.
Now showing at the Young Vic sixteen years after its 2009 Broadway premiere, Joseph’s play remains urgently relevant in its examination of humanity’s insatiable appetite for war and power, especially given the script’s omission of British complicity.
Directed by Omar Elerian.
Peter Forbes will be performing the role of the tiger from 13 December. Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo is at the Young Vic until 31 January.
Tickets from £25 to £57
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