The Play
Absent
Back by popular demand, featured on BBC Arabic and based on the novel by Scottish Iraqi writer Betool Khedairi, this one-woman show stars Hiba Medina (Vigil S2 (BBC), Antigone (On Strike) (Park Theatre) as Dalal in a haunting portrayal of life under severe restrictions in 1990s Baghdad.
Before going on tour, the play will be at Baron'sCourt Theatre from 22-26 January 2026
Tickets : www.baronscourttheatre.com/absent
The Plot
1990s Baghdad, Dalal is studying French at university and looking forward to her future. But then bombs start falling and sanctions turn neighbours into informants. All around is the wreckage of war. To survive, her uncle starts an apiary, soothsayer Umm Mazin flourishes, Saad opens a hair salon and introduces her to handsome Adel... but when people start disappearing, Dalal no longer knows who to trust.
Reviews
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(…) In its atmosphere of surveillance, suspicion, and eroding integrity, Absent recalls the tone of East German theatre and film produced before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
(...) Absent is an exquisitely crafted work that leads audiences beyond political headlines and into the intimate daily realities of ordinary Iraqis."
Beverly Andrews, Form-Idea.com
(...)The performance is superb. There’s a beautiful balance of humour and poignancy, light and shadow — you laugh, you ache, you sit with things you hadn’t fully considered before. But perhaps the greatest achievement is how Absent connects the specific and the universal: a specific time-and-place, with its political and social pressures, and a universal exploration of human endurance, memory, loss and hope. At its best, theatre doesn’t just reflect life — it makes you feel more alive. Absent does just that.
Muhi Al-Khudairi & Malaak Al-Rawi
