Stage: Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo

Kirk Douglas Theatre

Los Angeles

(213) 628-2772

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Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo may be “the most original drama written so far about the Iraq war,” said Charles McNulty in the Los Angeles Times. Rajiv Joseph’s haunting new play opens on two “out-of-their-depths” American soldiers, Tom and Kev, who are dispatched to guard a caged tiger at the Baghdad Zoo after the “shock and awe” bombings of 2003, which set free many of the ­animals. When the tiger bites Tom’s hand off, Kev kills the beast with a gold pistol looted from the effects of Saddam Hussein’s son Uday. A bizarre setup becomes a “bold theatrical metaphor” for the war’s complexities.

As the play progresses, Tom and Kev “hysterically seek a moral high ground that will sanction their killing and ease their pain,” said Laurence Vittes in The Hollywood Reporter. They don’t reach it. The tiger, personified by actor Kevin Tighe, passes into the afterlife and becomes a kind of predator-philosopher. Meanwhile, Joseph expands the play to capture the “terrifying dimensions” of war. We’re introduced to a panorama of “soldiers, despots, and victims,” living and dead, including Musa, a former topiary artist for the Hussein family, who becomes a translator for the “liberators.” The ghost of Uday Hussein haunts Musa, treading the stage carrying the decapitated head of his brother, Qusay.

Joseph gets a nice assist from veteran director Moisés Kaufman, said Jeff Favre in the Long Beach, Calif., Press-Telegram. The play falters in the first act, as the dialogue between Tom and Kev comes across as “forced and unrealistic,” and actors Glenn Davis and Brad Fleischer seem “stiff and overly mannered.” But Kaufman ratchets things up whenever the play begins to sag, and “drives the action ceaselessly.” He also coaxes inspired performances out of the other actors, particularly Tighe, who plays the tiger like a “grumpy old man who complains about the present while fondly recalling the past.” Even with its shortcomings, Bengal Tiger is “one of the few Iraq war plays that likely will remain relevant long after the fighting ends.”