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The ambassador’s belly dancer, Nadira Alieva |
Lifting the veil on the belly dancer and the ambassador
THE BRITISH AMBASSADOR'S BELLY DANCER
Arcola Theatre
AMBASSADORS: what is expected of them? For most, the hard-worn mantra of diplomacy wrapped in a grey suit and a cache of Ferrero Rocher suffices.
Not so Craig Murray, erstwhile British ambassador to Uzbekistan.
When Murray took the Middle Eastern post in 2002, he uncovered endemic corruption and torture. Rather than bite his tongue like his predecessors, he spoke out, to the great chagrin of the British government.
But Murray, by his own admission, was no saint. His marital indiscretions with Uzbek belly dancer Nadira Alieva proved the catalyst for a spectacular fall from grace.
When Nadira makes her entrance in the small Arcola studio space, she makes no bones about it. “I am Craig’s sin made flesh,” she coos, “but spanking is his real weakness.”
It’s beguiling trying to mentally couple this six foot Amazonian (with cheekbones that could carve a chicken) with Mr Murray, a lisping, Y-front sort of fellow with John Major pigmentation, but that is half the allure of this one-woman show. How do they work?
When the explanation comes, in a cringingly awkward scene where she dances seductively to Mr Murray’s soft-porn description of her, you rather wished it hadn’t.
But intrepid visitors should be under no illusion: this is Nadira’s story, not Murray’s. Her life has been a hard one, unquestionably.
The poverty of her parents forced her to become a drugs mule as a child, carrying heroin in her knickers from the age of 11; she attempted suicide at 14 and stripped at 19 to earn a living; the police have raped her twice.
When Murray does figure into the narrative he is like a white angel, though Nadira dodges the saccharine with a caustic wit: “He was stuck to me like s**t to a sheep’s arse. Who was this old foreigner? Did he have any money?”
It is her wit and obvious strength that win us over to the Murrays.
Until February 2
020 7503 1646
Transfers to the Arts Theatre from February 4 |
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