Baghdad Wedding

Published Thursday 5 July 2007 at 11:30 by Aleks Sierz

Although British theatre often grapples with the issue of the war in Iraq, what is missing is the voices of the Iraqis themselves.

So this debut play by Hassan Abdulrazzak, whose family fled Iraq, tells a familiar story from the refreshingly frank perspective of exile. The resulting play is suffused with a mixture of delicate melancholy and fierce indignation.

Jumping in time and place between London and Baghdad in the years 1998 to 2005, Baghdad Wedding looks at Salim, a doctor and author of a novel called Masturbating Angels, and his relationship with his best friend, Marwan.

Both men fall for the London-educated good-time girl, Luma, who then goes back to Baghdad to work as a doctor after the US invasion.

But when Salim returns to Baghdad in 2004 to marry, his happy day is destroyed by a US missile. What follows is Salim’s journey to hell, which is both a personal odyssey and a superb metaphor for his country’s woes.

Adulrazzak’s text is beautifully written, highly imaginative and emotionally true - it’s a great mix of anger, humour and poetry, spiced with a fine perception of the workings of the human heart.

Fluidly directed with great flair by Lisa Goldman, this production offers a satisfyingly mixture of laughter and horror. On Jon Bausor’s versatile set, which takes us into an insurgents’ hideout and a US military prison, as well as visiting the flats and cafés of Baghdad and London, Matt Rawle plays Salim with just the right intellectual verve, while Nitzan Sharron is the modest Marwan and Sirine Saba the exciting Luma. A thrilling experience.