Baghdad Wedding

Tonight Adam and I went to see Baghdad Wedding at the Belvoir Street theatre. It was very good, well worth seeing. My mum had gone earlier in the week to see it with friends and phoned me a little worried that we might not enjoy the play because she'd found it quite harrowing and confronting but I said all I cared was whether it was any good. I can see why mum was discomforted, there's a fair bit of graphic sex and violence stuff in there, but there was also a good dose of humour. I thought the acting was great, the set design was very effective and cleverly used and the story engaging.

From the Belvoir St Theatre website:

"A wedding is not a wedding in Iraq unless shots are fired.

Salim likes London. He got his medical degree, had an affair with a man and wrote a successful novel about it. But now Saddam Hussein’s gone and Salim’s going home to get married.

Sexy, funny and thrilling, this is life in Iraq as we never get to see it. Salim and his friends drink, love, argue, hope and tumble between escaping and succumbing as their country staggers to its feet again.

In 2005, 30-something Hassan Abdulrazzak queued with hundreds of fellow emigres in London to vote in Iraq’s first post-Hussein elections. When that great hope went belly-up, Abdulrazzak wrote his first play. After it opened the Evening Standard said, “The Prime Minister and his cabinet should take a brief course in political illumination. They should go to see Baghdad Wedding”. Company B’s friends in the UK immediately sent us the script!"

Review in the Sydney Morning Herald - "Powerful odyssey of love, sex and war."

I was amused enough by the sign at the foot of the stairs leading up to the theatre to pull out my camera.

No shoe-throwing allowed!

If only I didn't still have a thumping headache from the lack of coffee thing I'd say the evening worked out very nicely. At least my ear is pretty much all better.