The British Ambassador’s Belly Dancer

Published Thursday 10 January 2008 at 17:20 by Natasha Tripney

The British Ambassador of the title is Craig Murray, the former ambassador to Uzbekistan, who famously lost his job for exposing human rights abuses. While working there he also began a relationship with Nadira, a one-time teacher who was working as a dancer to support her family, a woman he was eventually to leave his wife for.

In a show co-written by Murray, Nadira and Alan Hescott, and performed by Nadira herself, we hear her story. It’s a curious exercise. Her tale is unarguably a fascinating one and you can understand her desire to counter the negative press she has been subjected to, to speak with her own voice. But the manner in which this was presented sometimes worked against it. In what is essentially a monologue - though Murray contributes some sections of voice over - Nadira speaks directly to the audience. She intersperses accounts of her rape at the hands of Uzbek police with wry anecdotes about Murray’s fondness for spanking.

She manages to convey a sense of the lengths to which a woman will go to in order to survive, but her hesitant, accented delivery sometimes undermines the impact of what she is describing. Despite this, she has a warm and engaging stage presence which saves this from becoming a totally indulgent exercise.