Baghdad Baby, Court Theatre, Chch, 15 Aug to 13 Sept
September 6th 2008 12:07
Welcome to Iraq, liberated from a cruel dictatorship... to the point of civil war.
Welcome to Baghdad, jewel of the Euphrates... where insurgents voice their objections to occupation with an explosion every few minutes.
Welcome to the Baghdad Café, where a clientele of CNN reporters, US soldiers, belly dancers and part-time Mujahideen are about to meet a lad from Napier doing his O.E....
A bitingly funny satire about politics, freedom, love, sex and other things Lonely Planet doesn't recommend in a war zone.
Baghdad, Baby!
THE FORGE: 15 August - 13 September 2008
Monday to Saturday 8pm
Running time: 2 hrs 15 minutes including interval
by Dean Parker
Directed by Jon Pheloung
SATIRE | NZ | 2005
Contains coarse language.
(net sourced)
The Middle East gets a taste of Kiwi
I'm bit of a fan of classics such as Catch 22 and Dr Strangelove, so after reading the blurb on the back of the flyer, I was hoping for something special and I wasn’t disappointed. Most people by now realize that war isn’t like a video game where you can press reset once the game ends. People die and the ripples caused by war can effect future generations for years to come.
What Baghdad Baby achieves, is to highlight the absurdities and tragedy of war whilst managing to inject a good dose of humor throughout, clearly showing the talent of playwright Dean Parker.
It was great to see familiar faces again, such as Claire Dougan, Tom Trevella and Jonathan Martin from Arsenic & Old Lace, Nicolas Kyle from The Cape and new faces (to me) such as Cassie Baker and David Mackenzie.
How did they perform? Well they just blew me away, all the cast gave very strong performances, Jonathan was excellent as the American soldier and Cassie as Shirin gave a great display of her dancing talents whilst quoting some pretty long lines of dialogue!
Claire played the part of a CNN reporter and showed an impressive range of emotions in her many scenes, ranging from hard bitten cynical journalist to showing how vunerable she could be regarding love.
David and Tom were both very good in their respective roles and Nicolas as the good old Kiwi from Napier (‘go the magpies’) summed up what I like about living in NZ. Laid back, air of innocence, happy go lucky and able to see good in most things.
A mention must be made about the set design, as always, very effective and how they linked in the TV’s, news reports and patrol footage into the story, combined with the décor of the café, made it very realistic experience.
Overall, an excellent play and a must see as its funny, powerful, somber, thought provoking and topical with a good amount of historical facts thrown in.
Words by Heath
Kiwiauthor rating 10/10
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