Saddam Trial Makes It To The West End - March 2, 2006

It was supposed to be a serious affair, but after five months, the farcical trial of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is to be made into a West End musical.

Lengthy commercial negotiations with the new Iraqi government (the USA) saw Andrew Lloyd-Webber beat rivals the Wachowski Brothers and Jerry Bruckheimer for the rights to the comical courtroom drama.

“I think with the right cast this will be a huge hit”, said Lloyd-Webber. “Ben Elton has already begun work on the music and, after turning down Omar Sharif and Ben Kingsley, we now have Steve Guttenberg interested in the lead role of Saddam”.

The show will be narrated by the infamous Iraqi Information Minister, Comical Ali, and will flash back to key points in the Iraq war, including scenes in the Oval Office. “We approached Harrison Ford for the part of George W Bush but he laughed at us”, added Lloyd-Webber. “The part will now be played by Clyde, the orangutan from ‘Every Which Way But Loose’.”

The trial’s ratings boomed in January after tough, new judge, Raouf Abdel-Rahman, took over. Ratings then skyrocketed as Saddam and his half brother, Barzan Ibrahim, tried to unsettle the stern, new judge with insults such as, "May your mustache be cursed". The judge, however, is a Kurd and has no mustache, unlike his Shiite wife Hairriya.

In another hilarious exchange, where Abdel-Rahman tried to restore order by banging his gavel, Saddam shouted, "Hit your own head with that gavel" before doing a defiant back spin and pushing a cream pie into a prosecuting attorney’s face.

In the musical, Saddam is then joined by a flamboyant chorus line of 100 dancing gavels, as he breaks into song and sings, “Gavel! Gavel! O-h-h-h, won’t you put down that gavel! Gavel”. The scene ends when a fifty-foot gavel comes crashing down from behind the chorus line, crushing 150 Kurds. Saddam then sings a denial of any involvement in the deaths.