Review Roundup: BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO at the Young Vic

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo opened this week at the Young Vic in the United Kingdom, and runs through January 31.

Rajiv Joseph’s Pulitzer-nominated play about American occupation in Iraq stars Sayyid Aki, Peter Forbes, Patrick Gibson, Ammar Haj Ahmad, Kathryn Hunter, Arinzé Kene, Sara Masry, and Hala Omran.

Franco Milazzo, BroadwayWorld: 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.

Andrzej Lukowski, TimeOut: Elerian was born to direct this - the play suits his tricksterish style and capricious humour. Rajha Shakity’s flexible set is evocative, an eerie, nocturnal netherworld. There’s an Apocalypse Now-like cracked odyssey quality to the play’s depiction of a generation going mad in a chaotic, lawless conflict, but unlike the US-centricity of most of the great works about the Vietnam War, this takes a wider view of its impact on Americans, Iraqis, and even nature itself.

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian: The pace is baggy and the tragedy is diffuse, its drama undercut by cerebral questioning. The production’s most enraged moments are downplayed when it could go for the jugular. But the high-wire mix of comedy, horror and intellectualism is brave, the imagination and profundity a breath of fresh air in a theatrical landscape that cleaves to easy entertainment and distraction from darkness. Joseph stares into the Nietzschean abyss, sniggering, and it sniggers back.

Sam Waite, All That Dazzles : Difficult to stomach in places, perhaps too politically-minded in some places for some viewers, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo finds a delicate balance between the literal and metaphorical, the factual and the fantastical, and between humanity as we recognise it and the horrors we have all been made to behold. It’s challenging, it’s stirring, and it’s often surprisingly funny – it’s a show about a captive tiger, and about how no one else in that time was ever any less a prisoner.

Matt Wolf, London Theatre: And though the entire company is first-rate, Haj Ahmad provides an eviscerating evening’s emotional centre as a kind man pressed into service as a translator and, by extension, into the smouldering inferno around him. There’s “nothing left to garden,” we’re told simply but plaintively near the end in a play whose scorched-earth sensibility sends you reeling into the night.

Susannah Clapp, Observer: Everything here is recognisable but strange, suggestive rather than explicit: crumbling masonry, an enormous mural of Saddam Hussein, rising smoke from unseen depths. Later, a huge stars and stripes is slapped across one side of the stage, and the memories of a garden of topiary animals – an alternative Eden – are floated. At the desolate end of the evening, a woman stands in black robes and sings. She is a leper; everyone around her is dead. These are scenes that might dismantle a mind.

Siobhan Murphy, The Stage: “Meanders round a bombed-out Baghdad." ... Absurdist comedy about the Iraq War suffers from a plot that’s missing in action.

Lucinda Everett, WhatsOnStage: In fact, the whole play rails against sentimentality, an admirable tactic that forces us to face war like grown-ups but which has its downsides. The first act, grounded in the men’s experiences, might not let us weep, but it does let us feel. However, after the interval, as Baghdad fills with ghosts, the action becomes more abstract, the focus turns more intensely to existential and religious musings, and the philosophical overtakes the emotional.

Sarah Hemming, Financial Times: The play gets over-entangled in its philosophising in places. But that’s offset by Hunter, who stepped into the role at the last minute to replace the unwell David Threlfall, and is quite superb. Dressed in a scruffy, tawny old coat and scuffed boots, she prowls the action, sardonic, stealthy, commenting on events with deadpan humour and grumbling at being forced into a sudden moral re-evaluation of her natural instincts — eating children and the like — by her posthumous existence. Her ethical musings, absurd as they may seem, underpin the play, contrasting with the madness of human atrocities. And she ends it with a quietly chilling warning: “Be conscious of the wind: where’s it coming from. Be still. Watch. Listen.”

Becky for Theatre & Tonic, Theatre & Tonic: The quality of the production is outstanding. Rajha Shakiry’s set consists of crumbling concrete, sandbags and dust, providing a detailed backdrop for striking visuals throughout. Jackie Shemesh’s lighting design blends warm and cold tones, merging life and death as the text itself does. Likewise, the props collected by Kate Margrett - including a soiled severed head and rich fake blood - made for some brilliantly horrific imagery, which altogether provides an exciting variety throughout.

Lucy Holz, A Young(ish) Perspective : Direction by Omar Elerian is masterful, teasing out the essential comic moments of the script. Rajha Shakiry has created a versatile set, with a vast concrete expanse easily transforming from tiger pen to psych ward to destroyed garden. The ensemble are exceptional, there’s no need for translation of the Arabic segments to understand the pain, anger or even the comedy.

Jane Darcy, The Reviews Hub: The tiger is a fabulous character in all senses. Her ghost haunts Kev, the remaining marine, who is consequently deemed to be insane. Tom, returning from surgery in the US with a bionic hand, is motivated less by a desire to reunite with his erstwhile buddy, Kev, than to retrieve two treasured possessions. There’s a lot of laughter at the notion of the gold-plated revolver, looted from Hussein’s presidential palace as there is for the equally absurd notion of Hussein’s gold-plated toilet seat. But they are devices which are in danger of being overworked in the play, used increasingly for easy laughs.

Stephanie Osztreicher, West End Best Friend: There are moments of real gore and some sharply designed sequences that frame this fractured world with confidence. At points some choices drift into what feels like improvised territory and not every beat lands, but there’s a certain charm in that rawness, a looseness that suits a play already teetering between the surreal and the painfully human.

Miss Woo, LondonTheatre1: When theatres across the country are offering feelgood Christmas shows and traditional family fun-filled pantomimes, the innovative Young Vic Theatre spearheads this darkly comic, seriously thought-provoking play, exposing the ramifications of war through life and death, forcing each character to confront their own demons, and conveying the immense human cost of victory.

Melody Adebisi, The Rendition: Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo is a complex show, that sometimes feels confusing. The play’s plot and dialogue is so scattered that it feels slightly chaotic. It deals with particularly heavy themes in an original and bold way, but there I also left with the feeling that I didn’t get all of it. Dark and unflinching, Joseph’s play is definitely not the easiest watch but still impactful. The play’s writing showcases Joseph’s wit, and it’s visual storytelling is a testament to its direction.

Nick Curtis, The Standard: God can’t exist in this hellscape and humans (and tigers) are hunted through it by conscience, even after death. The biblical exhortation “if thy hand offends thee, cut it off” is taken literally. This is heavy stuff, often handled by Joseph with acrid wit. There is a wickedly funny scene where Tom reveals the worst thing about having a state-of-the-art prosthetic (“like Robocop”) replace his right hand. Musa tries to understand the idiosyncrasies of American English through “knock knock” jokes.

Average Rating: 73.8%