Review of the Bengal Tiger at Baghdad Zoo – wild horror and sharp-toothed comedy from the Iraq War | stage

THere is a brutal, thrilling take on the European premiere of Rajeev Joseph’s surreal black comedy about the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. First, an animal is represented on stage, a tiger shot at a Baghdad zoo, that returns from the dead to hunt down the US Marine who pulled the trigger. Secondly, he speaks. In fact, he is wise and doubts the existence of God. A twisted version of Life of Pi? It’s definitely not a dream so much as a nightmare in which anything could happen.

Things oscillate from one thing to another with an illogical effect. To add to the unpredictability, Catherine Hunter plays the Panther after David Threlfall withdrew, until further notice, due to illness. The part was played on Broadway in 2011 by Robin Williams but Hunter brought her own comedic swagger.

Director Omar Illyrian has shown himself adept at handling absurdist black comedies including The Chairs (also starring Hunter) and this is an inspired match. She makes a reluctant rock ‘n’ roll tiger, relishes soul and looks like a female version of Keith Richards with a bandana and an electric guitar at one point.

Primarily about the men’s experience of war, this play follows two Marines Kev (Arinze Kane) and Tom (Patrick Gibson), a “dumb-and-dumber” double act with sharp edges, along with their Iraqi translator Musa (Ammar Hajj Ahmed), who worked as a gardener for Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay. The few women here are reduced to bits: a leper, a sex worker, an abused sister, all reduced to species (is that what war does?). Aside from Tiger, who Hunter emphatically calls “she.”

A very unconventional play, in which the dead haunt the living, often comically, and seek to do many things at once. It is theatrical yet volatile, wandering in structure as the characters wander from the literal landscape of urban collapse to the more symbolic world of a burning Garden of Eden.

The pace is loose, the tragedy is rampant, and its drama is undermined by cerebral questions. The production’s angrier moments are underplayed when they could hit your jugular vein. But the sublime mix of comedy, horror, gritty thought, imagination and depth is a breath of fresh air in a theatrical spectacle that sticks to easy entertainment and distraction from the dark. Joseph stares into the Nietzschean abyss, laughs, then laughs again.

Rajha Shakiri’s film revolves around a burning city transformed into biblical characters, as the characters get lost in the liminal and strange wilderness of an afterlife, beleaguered by grief or guilt, especially Musa, who feels constant remorse for having inadvertently placed his sister in the predatory hands of Adi (Mr. Aki). And the last one is his tormentor, who returns with his cut head (whisper!) in a sack, and it becomes a delicious dark comedy scene.

A play that is repeated and does not know how to end. But what’s the ending if you’re already dead and find yourself in your own recurring hell?