Girl Blog from Iraq: Baghdad Burning

Published on Monday 21 August 2006 00:52

PLEASANCE COURTYARD (VENUE 33)

THERE'S nothing pretentious or clever about this show from New York's Barrow Street Productions. Adapted from the weblog of a young middle-class Baghdad woman who calls herself Riverbend, it simply organises her thoughts over the last three years into a script for five actors, and leads us through her experience of the Western occupation. One of the cast's four women seems to represent her most traditional Iraqi self, in love with her magical country's palm-shaded landscape. Otherwise, her voice varies little; she is no Rachel Corrie, no brilliant, impassioned writer in the making.

What makes Girl Blog into a remarkable show, though, is the sheer street-level detail of the story Riverbend tells, and its heartbreaking account of the consequences of the invasion for young Iraqi women. The levels of physical and practical breakdown of life in Baghdad, caused by the sheer ineptness of the invasion plan, are shocking to consider, as Riverbend describes how the basic amenities of civilised life - a regular power supply, clean running water - have deteriorated over the last three years. Shocking, too, is the rise in outright lawlessness which the collapse of civil order has encouraged, making families like Riverbend's vulnerable to a constant threat of kidnapping and extortion.

Perhaps worst of all, though, is the extent to which that collapse has been accompanied by a resurgence of brutally repressive attitudes to women; of all the losses Riverbend has suffered, the one that brings her closest to despair is the loss of her freedom to work and earn, and - towards the end - even to leave her home unveiled at all.

This is a horrific story of the extent to which the West's blundering intervention in Iraq has blighted the lives of whole sections of the population who initially welcomed Saddam's overthrow. It is completely shaming, and the sheer passion with which the story is told transforms this into a deeply moving piece of theatre.

• Until 28 August. Today 2.10pm