Jazmine Naziha Jones’ spectacular journey through identity and memory is equal parts hilarious and heart-wrenching
A child cries behind a wheelie bookcase, fearful for a war 3000 miles away. Her daily routine of Neighbours and McDonald’s with her father, now interspersed with worry for aunts and uncles stepping on IEDs. The experience of second-gen immigrants can often be positively spun as reaping the benefits of their parents struggle, but this new Royal Court play skewers the notion that dual-nationals don’t carry the trauma of both with them.
Baghdaddy is the debut play of Jasmine Naziha Jones, also playing its lead Darlee, with direction from Royal Court stalwart Millie Bhatia. It centres on British-Iraqi Darlee, piecing back fragments of her relationship with her father throughout the lead up to Britain’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.
She’s guided through this by the Qareens, chorus-like figures that lead Darlee through dreams, nightmares and some rather unconventional therapy. They are unflinching puppeteers of Darlee’s memory, deactivating her father at any moment and forcing Darlee to participate in reliving her trauma. The friction between the three Qareens can be both hilarious and insightful, prompting debate over how much responsibility the traumatised have for traumatising others. The three Quareens (Souad Faress, Hayat Kamille, Noof Ousellam) are excellent – zoot-suited and booted – adopting a host of characters with aplomb, but it is the two leads that elevate Baghdaddy to another level entirely.
Philip Arditti is magnetic as Darlee’s Dad. He effortlessly slips between ages, playing the eager 17-year-old trying to assimilate into an unforgiving London with the same vivacity and authenticity as the stern 40-something wracked with fear and worry. He packs such life into his character without losing a drop of credibility, how easy it is to root for him makes it all the more impactful when his flaws cloud his judgement.
Jones gives a tour-de-force performance. Like Arditti, she is excellent through the ages. Her young Darlee is beautifully observed, bullseye writing and acting: ‘if starving children would eat my food, put it in an envelope and send it to them!’ But it is as a late teen, applying for a uni scholarship in front of a box-checking committee, that the play reaches its pinnacle. She delivers a poetic monologue that covers second-gen trauma and the atrocities of the West in Iraq. Shan’t say more, but it’s stunning.
For a first-time playwright, Jones’ command of form seems effortless. Baghdaddy flows between the heightened and the natural, with commedia dell’arte, spoken word and memory play peppered between appealing scenes of daily life between Darlee and Dad. It pushes and pulls, until holding us tightly for its prescient climax.
No expense has been spared on production value, to great effect. The set (Moi Tran) is an inviting template of stone steps and Arabic arches that has gorgeous set pieces layered on top throughout: a pharmacist’s, a Baghdad streetfront, an immense McDonald’s logo – it grows the production beyond the Court’s four walls. The lighting and sound are like a splitting atom (Jessica Hung Han Yun and Elena Peña), perfectly evoking the shock and brutality of a warzone.
This production will burrow into your brain like a termite. Jones jams the truth in our faces and forces us to confront our own biases and assumptions, our ignorance of the UK’s greatest foreign policy failure of the 21st Century, but does it with such heart and humour that it never comes close to being preachy or didactic. It is, quite simply, a necessary story, beautifully told – something the Royal Court has excelled at of late.