Ben Curthoys
posted 12 July 2007

We walk in to see a set of rough concrete and tiles, chipped at the edges in a way that could have been caused by time, but which hints at bombs. The solid stone promises a cool refuge from the heat of an Arabian summer (or in this reviewer's case, a sweaty dash down the Piccadilly line) which it sadly fails to deliver, but this seems to be the only thing it doesn’t manage to do. Solid and adaptable, it takes us convincingly from London to Baghdad, night club to mosque, insurgent compound to Abu Ghraib.

The opening scene sets the tone for the next hour; there are some funny and insightful one-liners, some set-ups for clever moments that echo lines throughout the text in different contexts, adding sophistication and layering, and a hefty chunk of exposition. Within seconds we know that this one's a writer, this one's a journalist, this one's a bit gay, this one's a bit insecure, this one's getting married, and this one's going to be the voice of reason. And so we roll into 60 minutes of back story, discovering how everyone got to where they are and showing in an even-handed and politically neutral way the human cost of war on lives, on relationships, and on the once ordinary middle-class existence of once ordinary middle class people.

Perhaps all the back story is necessary; it would be hard to point to scenes that should obviously be cut, but it feels like shaving 15 or 20 minutes off the opening wouldn’t hurt. If there were an interval after the first act, it would be entirely possible that not all of the audience would make it back. This would be a great shame. Just as it seems that back story is all we’re going to get - slightly after a feeling of disappointment and boredom has set in - the plot begins.

Suddenly the pace steps up an order of magnitude; you can sense the relief from the cast that they finally have something to do. And there is tension, and drama, and pain. Brutal Americans and murderous Iraqi insurgents to hate, with flashes of humanity lighting up the coldness and numbness on each side. And even what is pretty much a happy ending and the long awaited wedding - with the caveat of a knowing line in the closing scene: ‘Only in stories can a wedding be the end. In life, that's never the case. You can't tell how things might turn out.’ The story ends here, but the real life of Iraqis, in Baghdad and in exile, carries on.

Matt Rawle as Salim and Nitzan Sharron as Marwan both give commanding performances, as does Sirine Saba as Luma - though in the scene where she meets Marwan for the first time she comes on so strongly that it becomes impossible to believe that Marwan - even as shy and inexperienced as he is - doesn't get the hint. The lighting is handled with a great deal of good sense and taste, such that although a large number of specials are used, not once did they seem jarring, obvious, or out of place. OK, just the once - when you throw someone in prison, shining a cold, hard focussed spot down on them with sharp edges and playing the sound of a large metallic door clanging is about as bad as conducting a murder scene under ‘blood’ red lighting. The sound design struggles with the almost impossible task of representing gunfire and the even harder task of incoming missiles and Apache helicopters, but there are some delightfully subtle moments, in particular the croaking of night time crickets that was so wonderfully atmospheric that I didn't even notice that it was a sound effect until it had been on for about 10 minutes.

Baghdad Wedding is a timely play, with something to say about the nature of humanity that is irreducibly complex; it can't be boiled down to a sentence or two, it needs a whole play to say it in. And it manages to do this and still contain a huge number of quotable lines, dozens of laugh out loud jokes, and a healthy amount of crude innuendo.

Till 21 July 2007.