Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad

The Iraqi Theatre Company's production, Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad, took me completely by surprise. Even though I'd listened to its director, Monadhil Daood, talk about it and knew something of the way in which he had adapted Shakespeare's original play to reflect the current situation in his country I still hadn't been prepared for the force of his creation.  Daood does not pretend to have been completely faithful to the Elizabethan text.  His Capulet and Montague are half brothers, and Romeo and Juliet have known and loved each other hopelessly for nine years when the play begins.  Nevertheless, there are aspects of the Iraqi story that I'm sure Shakespeare would have recognised immediately, perhaps identifying with even more strongly than the modern Stratford audience can do.

The most obvious of these was the religious divide between the two families.  While the terms Sunni and Shia were never mentioned, the difference in the beliefs of the two groups was clear and the resulting hostility the trigger for much of the violence.  That the two parties shared the same immediate ancestor, that they came from the same root, just made the animosity the more tragic.  In a culture that is increasingly secular, this may not be something with which we easily identify, but Shakespeare's audience at The Globe, still all too aware of the terror a split in the Christian community could give rise to, would have understood immediately what was happening and why.  Daaod may not have been completely true to the story we all know, but he was certainly true to the emotions that fuelled it and to the daily fear that many Elizabethan would have lived with.  Perhaps the most concerning aspect of watching this production was realising that while I could come home to the relative safety of an English city, the people on stage were going to have to pack up at the end of the week and return to the atmosphere of constant anxiety they had depicted so disconcertingly well.