REVIEW: Robin Williams haunts ‘Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo’ on Broadway

Imaginative new drama regarding Iraq’s nightmare eloquently conjures up ghosts and conflicts

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

BROADWAY REVIEW

Truly a haunted and haunting new drama, “Bengal Tiger at the Baghad Zoo” is an imaginative, even poetic, consideration of the American invasion of Iraq.

Opening on Thursday at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, the play stars Robin Williams, whose memorable performance as a ghostly tiger in the midst of Baghdad’s blazing chaos represents only one shining facet among many sharp points in a remarkable Broadway production.

Composed with fine craft and intelligence by Rajiv Joseph, whose far more intimate and lighter piece, “Gruesome Playground Injuries,” successfully appeared Off Broadway earlier this season, “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” is an eloquent drama with a deep scope and fanciful ways.

Clad in tattered, dirty clothes, his head and face a nimbus of grey-white hair, Williams embodies a tiger slain after biting off the hand of an American soldier guarding his cage in the wrecked Baghdad zoo. As his disconsolate spirit prowls the burning city, the tiger wonders where God happens to be among such devastation.

The ghostly tiger soon freaks out Kev (Brad Fleischer), the ignorant Marine who shot him with a gold-plated gun pilfered from the mansion of Saddam Hussein’s dead son Uday (Hrach Titizian). After Kev dies, his suddenly wised-up ghost joins Uday and a host of apparitions haunting other characters.

Eventually the most spooked soul is mild-mannered Musa (Arian Moayed), an Iraq citizen formerly employed as a gardener by the monstrous Uday, for whom he created a lavish topiary landscape of animals, since ruined in the bombing. Torn like his nation by internal conflicts, Musa toils as a translator for the American forces, particularly Tom (Glenn Davis), the soldier who lost his hand to the tiger and now – fitted with an artificial one — is trying to reclaim loot like that gun and a solid-gold toilet seat.

The dark tapestry of significance that the playwright weaves so artistically is impressive. An Eden-like garden destroyed, golden symbols of a ruined country’s riches stolen by its crude invaders, a predatory beast pondering what he did that was so wrong in the eternal scheme of things – oh, the play’s many themes run rampant and yet there’s nothing pretentious and everything compelling about this deeply-felt threnody on war.

Depicting the philosophical tiger with grim humor, a gruff-voiced, soulful Williams submerges his bravura skills into the ensemble work of his fellow actors. Respectively playing the conflicted translator and increasingly cerebral Marine, Moayed and Fleischer unerringly chart their characters’ evolutions. Titizian suavely portrays the amoral Uday’s ghost – who totes his dead brother’s head in a plastic bag – with a jaunty ferocity that’s scary.

The play’s shifting moods and nightmarish atmosphere are beautifully orchestrated by director Moises Kaufman and his designers Derek McLane (sets) and David Lander (lighting). Seriously thoughtful drama rarely appears any more on typically giddy Broadway, but by staging this evocative play in a large Broadway house like the Rodgers, it assumes even greater resonance.

“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” continues at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 47th St., New York. Call (877) 250-2929 or visit www.bengaltigeronbroadway.com.