Guards at the Taj review

The pair share a believable, easy-going companionship, killing time on their long night watches with banal chitchat. Babur dreams of flying machines, rhapsodises about beauty and poses dangerous questions about religion and justice with a guileless openness that is clearly going to get him into trouble. When it inevitably does, Hussain and Thiara reveal a deep brotherly bond, embracing, cradling each other, and washing blood from skin with tremendous delicacy.

Roisin Jenner’s set features a tiered octagonal plinth covered with geometric carvings, which floods with trickling blood after the Shah’s cruel orders are carried out. A single wooden mast stands centrally, simultaneously suggesting an architectural pillar, a majestic tropical tree and a gore-spattered whipping post. An atmospheric soundscape from composer Niraj Chag and sound artist Xana helps to create the sense of majesty and awe demanded by the script. Edgy, gripping tracks feature electronic instrumentation and samples of traditional musical styles laid over pulsing dance beats, which blend thrillingly with an unsettling mix of distorted birdsong, animal growls and human screams to evoke torture chambers and idyllic jungles teeming with wildlife.

These contrasts – between freedom and constraint, beauty and grotesque horror – cut to the heart of the play’s argument. Though the script meanders, Joseph keeps returning to a fascinating central conflict between the soaring creative potential of the human spirit, and the unthinking conformity that leads ordinary people to commit acts of barbarism.