Blood wedding

Theatre people know why America invaded Iraq. To secure the West’s supply of angry plays. Here’s the latest, Baghdad Wedding, which opens with a US pilot mistaking a nuptial party for a column of enemy tanks and — whoopsidaisy — opening fire. Bride and groom are wiped out. Their relatives go into mourning. Then the groom reappears as a ghost in a ripped suit. This isn’t a welcome surprise. Alive, the man was already quite annoying: a tall, dark, handsome, well-connected, womanising alcoholic millionaire who’d just published a critically acclaimed best-selling novel about sodomy. Dead, he’s worse. ‘I’m dead,’ he says at one point, ‘so I can say what I like.’ Then a bigger surprise. Mr Dead shows up in hospital — alive. It turns out that the back-blast from the US rocket sort of swept him into a gulley where no one noticed him. ‘What did we bury?’ someone asks.