Kathryn Hunter in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo [Ellie Kurttz]

IN September 2003, while guarding Baghdad Zoo, a US Marine loses his hand feeding a starving Bengal tiger through the bars of its cage. His comrade shot the animal dead. This incident inspired Rajiv Joseph’s 2009 play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, a blistering satire on the futility of war and its cycle of violence.

Patrick Gibson and Arinzé Kene play hapless Marines, Tom and Kev. Tom has stolen a golden pistol and toilet seat from Uday Hussein’s palace, hoping to sell them back home. After the mauling, Tom returns to the US for surgery, while Kev – who kept the golden gun after shooting the tiger – descends into paranoia, convinced he is followed by its ghost.

The tiger (Kathryn Hunter, excellent, stepping in at short notice for an unwell David Threlfall), a self-professed atheist, roams Baghdad’s streets, contemplating existence, sin and redemption. Pounding on an electric guitar, she questions God’s place in a shattered world.

Musa (Ammar Haj Ahmad), a former gardener for Uday (Sayyid Aki) and now a translator for the US army, is himself haunted by his former master. Proud of his 26 bullet wounds, and carrying his dead brother’s head in a bag, Uday taunts Musa. Unable to forgive himself for the loss of his sister Hadia (Sara Masry), Musa strikes an uneasy deal with Tom that ends in an abandoned leper colony in the desert.

Despite uneven pacing, Joseph weaves together an extraordinary combination of absurdist comedy, horror and dark symbolism. Director Omar Elerian and designer Rajha Shakiry conjure a nightmarish world; a lost Eden amid the wreckage of war.

The women’s roles are frustratingly slight, but nuanced performances add complexity to deliberately caricatured roles beyond simplistic depictions of good and evil or victim and aggressor.

Recommended.

Until January 31
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