Photo © Robert Workman
With controversial documents – WikiLeaks and the David Kelly toxicology reports – once more hitting the headlines, Iraq is ever with us. As are its ghosts. Canadian playwright Judith Thompson’s Palace of the End, winner of the 2009 Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award, now at the Arcola Studio in Hackney in a spare, eloquent revival by Jessica Swale, figures three of them. It is a painful reminder of the human cost of a desperate and degrading period in their, and our, history.