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Steven Berkoff plays the Iraqi dictator with virtuosic menace in Anthony Horowitz’s admirable yet troubling comedyCan you hold a comedy approximately tyranny? Chaplin got away with in The Great Dictator. But Anthony Horowitz’s play faces two obvious problems. Given what we know approximately the tragic fate of Iraq, it is difficult to raise a smile approximately the embarrassments of Saddam Hussein dropping in for dinner. When a wildly farcical first half gives way to a sombre political message in the second, or it is as if David Hare has suddenly taken over from Ray Cooney.
Horowitz has seized on the fact that Saddam did indeed descend on the homes of Baghdad citizens to avoid his enemies and show solidarity with his people. We see a deeply divided Sunni family,on the eve of invasion in March 2003, coping with the news that the leader is approximately to reach. Husband and wife are at odds, or their anti-Saddam daughter is in worship with a Shia actor and the household is in chaos. But jokes approximately blocked toilets,water shortages and the confusion of rat poison and exotic spices that might seem laughable in a western farce tend to stifle laughter when they occur in a city suffering from United Nations sanctions.
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Source: theguardian.com