Review: BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO, Young Vic

Bengal Tiger At Baghdad Zoo, arriving now at the Young Vic for its long-overdue European premiere, is ostensibly about the American occupation of Iraq. Really, though, Rajiv Joseph’s Pulitzer-nominated work is about two things: a gold-plated toilet seat stolen from Uday Hussein (son of Saddam and recreational rapist, torturer and murderer), and the sheer, unforgivable absurdity of existence.

Directed with a nightmarish, itchy precision by Omar Elerian, this production hit a spot of real-world chaos before it even opened. David Threlfall was set to play the titular beast (a role first played on Broadway by the late Robin Williams), but after he fell ill, the legendary Kathryn Hunter stepped in at the eleventh hour. Watching this diminutive powerhouse in a rusty red trench coat patrol the stage questioning the world is being inside the mind of an over-caffeinated philosopher.

We start with two standard-issue Marine grunts, Kev (Arinzé Kene) and Tom (Patrick Gibson), guarding the bombed-out zoo. They have three goals: getting pussy, getting out of here and getting something worthwhile to bring home. For Kev, that’s bragging rights and war stories; Tom, meanwhile, is looking to capitalise on the gold-plated treasures he looted from the Hussein mansion. As he tells Kev, "between this gun and that toilet seat I can sit pretty. Pretty on a gold toilet seat, dude."

Both are precisely the kind of young men who think they're starring in their own war movie, right up until the point when Tom unwisely decides to tease a caged tiger with a Slim Jim. Driven by hunger and a justifiable lack of professional courtesy, it bites Tom’s hand clean off. 

And bam. One dead tiger, one maimed Marine, and that's where the fun really starts.

Because the tiger? He's back - or, as Hunter pointedly exclaims, "she”) - patrolling the ruins of Baghdad, trying to figure out if God exists and, if so, why the Almighty is allowing all this nonsense. Hunter’s existentialist monologues are (unlike Tom's stolen booty) pure gold, delivered by a creature who measures virtue based on whether you're going to eat him or not.

The play then spirals into a grand, multi-ghosted gothic satire. Kev, the trigger-happy Marine, goes insane, haunted as he is by visions of the tiger he slew. Their gardener-turned-translator Musa (Ammar Haj Ahmad, the closest this play has to a moral centre) is tormented by a dead Uday (a Joker-like Sayyid Aki); his perma-laughing ex-employer carries his own brother’s bloody head around in a bag and stalks the topiarist with stories of how he killed Musa’s young sister. When Kev dies literally by his own hand, his voice follows Tom around passing on advice from the afterlife.

Elerian has already dived into comic absurdity this year with his take on Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros and here he marshals another chaotic mess into a compelling, if structurally itchy, nightmare. The creative team, including designer Rajha Shakiry (concrete and chains, naturally), lighting designer Jackie Shemesh, and sound designer Elena Peña, construct a perfect environment for existential misery.

Hunter brings a growling, grouchy, sweary ferocity to the philosophical feline, cracking gallows jokes and quoting Dante. She prowls the stage, demanding answers from a God she doesn’t believe in ("Tigers are atheists. Heaven and hell? Those are just metaphorical constructs that represent 'hungry' and 'not hungry.'"). Round and round she goes, seeking a futile justification for the cruelty that she sees all about her. At one point, she asks "what kind of twisted bastard creates a predator and then punishes him for preying?", a question that Uday may also be pondering. It’s a truly great piece of casting that adds to the play's delicious strangeness. 

Kene, Gibson and Aki do their level best with their one-note roles but it is the Syrian actor Haj Ahmad who shines brightest. He digs deep to display the conflicted Musa, a man who feels responsible for his sister’s brutal death and despondent at being forced to help his latest set of overlords perpetrate more violence onto his people; of all the living characters, only he is haunted from the beginning and the torture he inflicts upon himself becomes heartbreakingly apparent towards the end. His compatriot Hala Omran makes a last minute appearance as a leper presiding over a Chekhovian finale; her presence recalls her role in Sami Ibrahim’s fantastic two Palestinians go dogging, another through-provoking and surreal Middle East drama.

Ultimately, it is Joseph’s luminous script that makes the greatest difference. Pinging us between soul-searching monologues and macho bro talk, he cleverly skips us from scene to scene, each featuring no more than two or three characters engaged in intense dialogue. There’s a refined balance of comedy with dramatic depth that few plays this year have showed with this confidence. His story perhaps zigs then zags a bit too much to make whatever points Joseph had in mind stick but his ambition can’t be faulted. It'll make you laugh, then it'll make you feel bad for laughing. Which, let's be honest, is the purest form of fun there is. 

Bengal Tiger At Baghdad Zoo continues at the Young Vic until 31 January 2026.