Theatre review: Baghdaddy

Whoa, Baghdaddy (Bam-ba-lam)

Jasmine Naziha Jones' wildly hyperactive playwrighting debut Baghdaddy deals with the guilt of a woman who feels she could have done more to support her British-based Iraqi father when he was trying to process the wars in the country where much of his family still lived; but how much could she be expected to understand, when she was eight years old at the time? In Milli Bhatia's production the playwright herself plays Darlee, who remembers her Dad (Philip Arditti) and how he coped with living in safety while Baghdad was burning on the news. In both the 1990s' and 2000s' wars, he tried to support his family by doing one-man humanitarian runs, smuggling medicine, cash, and information held back by the regime to neighbouring countries where his brother could collect them. But back at home, all Darlee sees is her beloved father becoming distant.

She also flashes back to what she knows of his story before she was born, moving to London for university only for the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s to break out. With all her other sons already conscripted, his mother begs him to stay where he is.

But Darlee relates the story not only with the fragmentary understanding of events she had as a child, but also using a child's storytelling world. So if the story's triggered by an adult desire to understand the past, that's quickly hijacked by an anarchic trio of supernatural creatues, a Jinn and two Qareen (Souad Faress, Hayat Kamille and Noof Ousellam) in colourful suits. Like overenthusiastic kids' TV presenters or malevolent Teletubbies, they overrule the ways Darlee tries to steer the story, making it even more frenetic.

You certainly can't fault Naziha Jones for ambition in her first full-length play, offering up something that doesn't play to any rules but its own and doesn't look or feel like anything else on stage. And it's for the most part successful, with both comedy and drama getting well-served, and a unique viewpoint applied to a war that felt both distant and right in your home (the description of Baghdad's "green skies" vividly brought back the night camera footage that was a staple of the news in the '90s.) It's exhausting to watch though, the theatrical equivalent of a toddler on tartrazine.

And not everything pays off; the second act takes us to the 2003 invasion, by which point Darlee is a teenager preparing to go to university, still in something of a rebellious phase towards her dad, but more conscious of what it means to be part-Iraqi and have people in England pay lip-service to understanding her family's predicament. Most of this act is taken up by two monologues, first Darlee herself snapping at an interview board's platitudes, then in the better of the two, Dad delivers the story of his brother's death in a bleak speech that contrasts with the Dr Seuss-inspired rhyme it's told in. There's nothing wrong with the monologues per se, but the abrupt way they're introduced feels like the show deciding that its distinctive style can't show the whole picture, and making a sharp turn to just stating the subtext outright.

It's also a bit distracting that there's only one, fleeting reference to Darlee's mother: Some of the scenes have the feel of a divorced dad who's got his daughter for the weekend, but given he arrives in the UK and is struck by how many broken families there are, I would have thought we'd have had some comment if the same had happened to him.

But we're definitely in unusual and distinctive territory for much of the show, so Naziha Jones and Bhatia can be forgiven if not all of their ambition pays off. It's also something of a technical triumph - Moi Tran's steep and dangerous-looking stairs concealing bright surprises, plus the brightly-coloured suits and Adi Gortler's movement direction all contribute to the feel of a Saturday morning cartoon that's gone horribly dark. It's far from perfect, and so frantic it's probably doing wonders for the bar's profits in people needing a stiff drink to calm them down at the interval, but Baghdaddy won't be forgotten in a hurry either.

Baghdaddy by Jasmine Naziha Jones is booking until the 17th of December at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Downstairs.

Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Helen Murray.