Christopher Allen, left, and Kristen Thomson star in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, a metaphysical 2009 play by Rajiv Joseph, which is set in the early days of the Iraq War.DAHLIA KATZ/Supplied
- Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo
- Written by Rajiv Joseph
- Directed by Rouvan Silogix
- Starring Christopher Allen, Andrew Chown, Ahmed Moneka and Kristen Thomson
- Company: Crow’s Theatre and Modern Times Stage Company
- Venue: Crow’s Theatre in Toronto
- Year: To Nov. 6
Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, a metaphysical 2009 play by Rajiv Joseph set in the early days of the Iraq War, has reached Toronto a little more than a decade after its Broadway debut – here at a time when the instability in that country since the American-led invasion in 2003 has been displaced from many minds by other concerns near and far.
So though this Crow’s Theatre and Modern Times Stage Company co-production may be a local premiere, it also feels like an opportunity to reassess the script as well.
How well does this American play, full of ghosts, stand up as an artistic response to a war that may not be front of mind but haunts so much of today’s geopolitical reality?
The action begins at the Baghdad zoo. A tiger (Kirsten Thomson) is watching a pair of U.S. Marines named Tom (Andrew Chown) and Kev (Christopher Allen) patrolling around her cage and commenting sardonically.
Kirsten Thomson, centre, plays a tiger who is watching two U.S. Marines named Tom (Andrew Chown) and Kev (Christopher Allen) patrolling around her cage.DAHLIA KATZ/Supplied
The tiger recently saw a pride of lions escape from their enclosure after the wall keeping them in was blown up – and witnessed them get mowed down by machine guns in the streets almost immediately after.
“There it was: freedom!” she says. “And they blew it.”
But the tiger isn’t any safer having stayed in her cage: She’s starving. When Tom tries to humanely intervene by feeding her a piece of his beef jerky, she bites off his hand and is shot dead by Kev.
This could be a short play all of its own – and, if it were, you’d call its use of metaphor heavy-handed and reductive. But in fact, this violent opening scene is only the beginning – and the play subsequently splits in half, two strands of plot setting off on separate planes of existence.
In the world of the living, Bengal Tiger in the Baghdad Zoo becomes a heist story told in the manner of a Coen brothers movie.
Right before losing his hand, Tom was showing off a gun made of solid gold that he took from the palace of Uday Hussein when he was part of the raid that left that sadistic son of Saddam dead.
After undergoing surgery, Tom returns to Baghdad to search for the valuable weapon, as well as another looted object he stashed in the desert: Uday’s solid-gold toilet seat. (It’s not hard to flush out the meaning behind the symbolism in this play.)
Tom’s quest reunites him with Kev, now in the hospital, and leads to a series of encounters with an Iraqi named Musa (Ahmed Moneka), who has been working with the Americans as a translator – and, prior to the invasion, worked for Uday as a gardener.
Meanwhile, in the afterlife, the tiger is stunned to find herself neither in heaven or hell, nor gone – and wonders if God is punishing her for her instincts as a predator. But it turns out she is just one of an increasing number of ghosts roaming Baghdad.
Uday, played by Ali Kazmi, left, is haunting Musa, played by Ahmed Moneka, while carrying around the severed head of his brother, Qusay.DAHLIA KATZ/Supplied
Among those spectres is Uday himself (Ali Kazmi), who is haunting Musa while carrying around the severed head of his brother, Qusay.
This is where the play, and director Rouvan Silogix’s production, struggles to find the right tone. On opening night, the majority of the audience seemed disturbed by this gruesome ghost, but a minority of the spectators took the over-the-top sight of this villain whispering in the ear of a prop head as a cue to laugh their own off.
Thomson’s tiger is the more compelling metaphysical presence – unsettling even when just silently staring; this is an actor who knows how to do more with less. (She’s not wearing a tiger costume, by the way – just a pair of pants and vest in Ming Wong’s design.)
Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo is Silogix’s first production as the new artistic director of Modern Times Stage Company; Uday aside, it’s very confident and assured.
Silogix’s decision to stage the show in the round – so guns are often pointed in the direction of audience members – is not exactly relaxing, but it successfully strips these weapons of any sexiness and drives home what it means to be a civilian casualty. The single set designed by Lorenzo Savoini, which accumulates props and discarded costumes as the evening goes on, is a visual reminder that action has long-lasting consequences and no rug is big enough to sweep the past under.
The acting of the living characters, meanwhile, is uniformly riveting. The pitch-black jokes and touching undercurrent of the profanity-filled interactions between the marines is expertly executed, while Allen and Moneka make their characters’ respective mental unravellings distinct and avoid clichés of “going mad.”
Some of Joseph’s writing, nevertheless, feels gratuitous – and I’m not referring to the jarhead jargon, full of the casual homophobia and misogyny. Deaths are described in detail and, in the case of one of Uday’s victims, the details are dripped out so slowly as to feel salacious. Other details are comparatively glossed over: See the characters named only “Iraqi woman” and “Iraqi girl.”
The existential philosophizing in this strange play is often resonant but, regarding Iraq as a distinct conflict or place, its meaning seems stuck in the fog of war.