Kedar [rating:4] (4/5 stars)
Marines (Craig Marker* L, Gabriel Marin* R) guard Tiger (Will Marchetti*) in the Baghdad Zoo.
Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo: Drama by Rajiv Joseph. Directed by Bill English. San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post St., S.F. (415) 677-9596 or www.sfplayhouse.org.
October 4 – November 16,2013
A stunning but problematic Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo at San Francisco Playhouse
Rajiv Joseph is no stranger to the Bay area where his play Animals Out of Paper was a smash hit in 2010 at the intimate 99 seat SF Playhouse and his The North Pool was equally well received at TheatreWorks in Silicon Valley in 2011. His 2011 Pulitzer Prize nominated play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo is being mounted in the expansive new 300 seat theatre off Union Square.
This is Playhouse’s 11th season and befitting their expansion they have stretched their name to “San Francisco” Playhouse and prefer to label the 2013-2014 season as the beginning of their second decade with reassurance that they will continue to produce “gripping storytelling . . . dedicated to ‘Body and Soul’.”
Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo certainly is gripping, contemporary and thoughtful but also somewhat pretentious. The huge stage is a desert wasteland (sets by Bill English) strewn with concrete and rebar remnants of war with sand dunes projected on the rear wall. The superb cast defuses Joseph’s pretension with sincere performances finding humor in the chaotic world that is post-war Iraq.
To make his points more universal and less personal Joseph uses anthropomorphism with the Bengal tiger being his narrator and creates ghosts returning from the recent dead to communicate with the living. He also includes a topiary garden filled with animals as a stand in for the Garden of Eden. It is a garden that has witnessed terror and Tiger assures a small disfigured child that God will not visit this place. Tiger has earlier informed us that animals are atheists.
The impact of the war in Iraq on the soldiers is a major theme as some turn into looters and others driven to insanity. There are the symbolic gold revolver and golden toilet seat ransacked from a Hussain palace playing an important symbolic role in the action and denouement.
It also is a damnation of the war destroying Iraqi culture and subverting gentle people into abettors of the victors/invaders. One of these people is Musa (strong performance by Kuros Charney, holding his own with Marchetti, Marin and Marker) the once gentle gardener creator of the topiary animal garden and now acting as an interpreter. The horrors that he and his family have endured are ignored for the sake of survival. Set designer/director Bill English cleverly suspends the topiary animals above the stage effectively allowing the actors to roam freely among the animals.
San Francisco Playhouse’s production is the complete package with reference to the staging and acting but you too will probably leave the theatre with questions rather than answers to the complex nature of this play. Never-the-less do not miss Will Marchetti’s brilliant under-played Tiger, Craig Marker’s poignant descent into madness as Kev, Gabriel Marin’s tenacious depiction of Tom’s search for the looted gold objects and Kuros Charney’s growth from physical subservience to mental independence. Running time about 2 hours.
Kedar K. Adour, MD
Courtesy of www.theatreworldinternetmagazine.com
