STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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A Museum in Baghdad, Swan Theatre Stratford-upon-Avon
Hannah Khalil’s ambitious new play suffers from information overload
History lesson: A Museum in Baghdad
[Ellie Kurtz]
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FOCUSING on Baghdad Museum, one of the world’s greatest, which was devastatingly looted in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, this is a play struggling to communicate with an audience sated by news of more recent Middle East crises.
The action deals simultaneously with both the efforts of the indefatigable Gertrude Bell (Emma Fielding), to open the newly created museum in 1926 and those of Ghalia Hussein (Rendah Heywood) to retrieve what was possible after the destruction decades later.
Khalil questions the meaning to be drawn from our understanding of antiquities and what values they can offer to a world ripped apart by violence and suffering.
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