Vincent Dowd World Service arts reporter

Andrew Steggall went to Baghdad to set up his cast

The 1918 play The Soldier's Tale has been updated for London's Old Vic theatre with a cast of performers from Europe and Iraq.

The original play with music, by the Swiss writer Charles Ferdinand Ramuz and Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, was written at the end of World War I.

But this new production is designed to get people thinking about the current situation in Iraq. The script weaves together new Arabic and English texts with the original's writing.

In rehearsals for the play, director Andrew Steggall has struggled to combine Iraqi and British performance disciplines. This has largely meant trying stop all the actors and musicians making a noise at the same time.

And the Russian element has complicated issues further.

Our hope is that out of this will come discussion and emotion and ideas Kevin Spacey, Old Vic artistic director

The original tale came from a Russian folk story about a soldier who sells his soul to the devil.

So has this post-Saddam production been set in Russia with a semi-Iraqi score? Or in Iraq with bits of Russian music? How will the audience react to some characters speaking English and others Arabic?

The 26 year-old Steggall had already worked on a production of The Soldier's Tale when the grim headlines from Iraq persuaded him to go to Baghdad to set up another, Arabic-English production.

"If nothing else, we will be a precedent saying: Look, over there are English and Iraqi people trying to kill one another but over here are English and Iraqi people trying to create art," he says.

'Political'

Steggall's original plan was to do the show in Baghdad, but reality intervened.

In the UK, the Old Vic is one of the highest-profile venues with Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey as artistic director. So failure here would not be a private affair.

Kevin Spacey: Not seeking to make headlines with the play

Given the contentious nature of anything to do with Iraq, is offering a home to the production meant to grab headlines? Spacey insists not.

"We haven't set out to make any kind of overtly political statement. I think we probably all come from the school that good politics make bad theatre. So we're hoping it's a human experience," he says.

"People will come to the theatre with their own ideas and feelings one way or another in terms of what politics they may derive from it. Our hope is that out of this will come discussion and emotion and ideas."

Ala'a Rasheed is one of three actors to have come from Baghdad for the show. His attitude to what is happening in his homeland is realistic.

"I'm optimistic to see what will happen in the coming days and months. Though not as much as I was a couple of years ago because we wait and wait and nothing is changed. But as human beings we live in hope," he says.

Steggall, equally realistically, knows that a theatrical event will not bring peace to a troubled nation.

When comfortably-off cultural types from the West stray into areas which journalists like to keep for themselves they risk being portrayed as dilettantes.

As always with the theatre the only way to know if it works will be to see the show.