Theatre review: Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo

I'm starting 2026 with a show that's already had some upheaval, as Omar Elerian's production of Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo is on its third actor in the title role after a month on stage. Peter Forbes is now playing the Tiger, once an apex predator but now starving in a bombed-out cage in Baghdad in 2003. Most of the animals have fled the zoo - generally ending up shot dead soon afterwards - but the Tiger has stoically stayed behind until the arrival of two US marines: Tommy (Patrick Gibson) goads the animal and gets his hand bitten off for his trouble, and Kev (Arinzé Kene) shoots and kills the animal. But Rajiv Joseph's metaphysical drama isn't done with him, and the ghost of the Tiger stalks the ruined city, searching for meaning in an afterlife it never believed in, and haunting the man who killed him until Kev starts to go mad.

It's definitely an odd show and hard to put your finger on: As in Guards at the Taj, Joseph gives us scenes of profundity expressed in casual chat between a pair of out-of-their-depth soldiers, but it's in the more expansive universe the play creates that things get murkier.

In a way the play could be expressed as a series of hauntings: After the Tiger haunts him into madness, Kev himself dies and haunts Tommy, who's returned to a war zone he didn't need to because he wants to retrieve the gold-plated gun and toilet seat he looted during the raid that killed Uday Hussain. Meanwhile Uday himself (Sayyid Aki) is haunting Musa (Ammar Haj Ahmad,) his former gardener who's now taken a job as a translator for the Americans. Even as we find out why still seeing Uday is a particularly cruel fate for Musa after what the dictator's son did to his family, the translator has to question whether he keeps aligning himself with monsters.

Joseph's view of the afterlife is one where the dead are granted huge stores of knowledge they never had in life - Kev is a bombastic idiot who after death gains knowledge and insight into the people his side have been "liberating," while the Tiger experiments with a vegetarian diet (presumably largely Frostie-based) after the existence of life after death means he ties himself up in mental knots about god and the morality of being a creature created to kill.

The play does turn its characters' philosophising in on itself for more comic effect as well, as Tommy's own moral quandary sees him feeling the need to justify himself to a prostitute (Sara Masry,) that he doesn't disrespect her but has to hire her because he's lost his wanking hand. The play does feel like the female characters are a bit of an afterthought, used in a vaguely mystical way like Hala Omran's singing Leper, but their scenes with Gibson are always interesting to watch, for reasons of acting.

Joseph has written some fairly short plays I've enjoyed and I think the greater length here is where I struggled - by the interval I was unsure what was going on but willing to go along for the ride, but I'm not sure what we got in the second act really resolved anything, or gave us any great insight into what the playwright was trying to say. Well-acted all round, but frustrating to try and find meaning in.

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo by Rajiv Joseph is booking until the 31st of January at the Young Vic.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Ellie Kurttz.