STAGE WEST
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page

Theater reviews

Stage West

Eye of the ‘Tiger’

1/1/2013

0 Comments

 
​Death on a broad scale is examined at ion theatre, which is staging Rajiv Joseph’s Pulitzer-nominated Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. Set in Iraq after the fall of Saddam, Joseph’s volatile drama traffics in guilt and ghosts. The central figure and truth-seeker is a tiger (Ron Choularton) wearing not stripes but rags. He prowls the stage, challenging God to explain or justify the way things are, violent and inexplicable as they seem to be. His rants are funnier and somehow more incisive coming from a “tiger,” though they feel at times stagy. Brian Abraham’s Arab gardener, Musa, is the play’s most sympathetic character: He’s a topiary artist, a reluctant go-between in the real and afterlife mayhem in Baghdad, and the purveyor of playwright Joseph’s weightiest words.
            Claudio Raygoza, who also appears as Saddam’s eldest son, Uday, directs a charged cast that includes Jake Rosko and Evan Kendig as American soldiers who succumb to the lure of Saddam’s ill-gotten gold and to self-destruction. Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo is thick with symbolism, but it’s also a story of man and beast, and how it’s hard to tell the two apart. 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    David L. Coddon is a Southern California theater critic.

    Archives

    June 2023
    May 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    August 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    January 2016
    January 2015
    December 2014
    January 2014
    January 2013
    January 2012
    January 2011

    Categories

    All
    Theatre Review

David Coddon

About 
David Coddon Fiction
Theatre Reviews

Support

Contact
FAQ
Terms of Use
© COPYRIGHT 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page