The USA's misadventures in Viet Nam were captured in memorable theatrical fashion by David Rabe's trilogy and John DiFusco's Tracers. Now, the Iraqi War has spawned a play to match those important, ground-breaking works -- Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, by Rajiv Joseph. Set in 2003, the play centers on two young American marines, Tom (Glen Davis) and Kev (Brad Fleischer), who have been assigned to guard duty at the Baghdad Zoo, which has been bombed by the U.S. army as part of its "shock and awe" tactics in Iraq. All the animals (especially the lions) have fled their shattered cages, only to find death instead of freedom in the jungle-like, war-torn city.
We learn all this from the one remaining animal in the zoo, a Bengal tiger (played with sardonic, black-humor flair by Keven Tighe) who talks directly to the audience. Tiger must also listen to the two uptight, trigger-happy marines as they bicker and bitch about the absurdity of their situation, warriors reduced to keeping watch over a lone, smelly beast.
Kev, a country boy, is completely overwhelmed by the chaos of the occupation, but Tom (a street-smart Black) thinks he's on top of it, having copped a golden toilet seat from Saddam Hussein's palace, along with a gold-plated pistol which once belonged to Hussein's son, Uday.
Tom means to sell the toilet seat and finance his future with the profits. Only problem is, he gets into an altercation with Tiger which ends up badly. His hand is bitten off, spurring Kev to shoot and kill the animal with the golden gun.
Tiger becomes a ghost who wanders in and out of the lives of Tom and Kev, who both end up in a military hospital, the former to receive a prosthetic hand, the other to recover from shellshock.
The other characters in the play include Musa (Adrian Moayed), a grief-stricken Iraqi gardener turned military translator; Uday Hussein (Hrach Titizian), another ghost in a land of ghosts; an Iraqi woman (Necar Zadegan) and Musa's young sister (Sheila Vand, who also plays a prostitute).
Joseph ties all of these disparate characters together in a compressed, tightly-knit, highly-charged way, mixing realism with metaphor, profanity with poetry. The result is a strikingly original, bold and blood-soaked drama that signals the arrival of an important new dramatist on the American stage.
Joseph is aided immeasurably in his triumph by director Moises Kaufman, set designer Derek McLane, and by his cast, who contribute some of the finest and most fiery acting L.A. has seen in many a season.
