FOCUSING on Baghdad Museum, one of the world’s greatest, which was devastatingly looted in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, this is a play struggling to communicate with an audience sated by news of more recent Middle East crises.

The action deals simultaneously with both the efforts of the indefatigable Gertrude Bell (Emma Fielding), to open the newly created museum in 1926 and those of Ghalia Hussein (Rendah Heywood) to retrieve what was possible after the destruction decades later.

Khalil questions the meaning to be drawn from our understanding of antiquities and what values they can offer to a world ripped apart by violence and suffering.

A demanding piece in which the dialogue switches at times into Arabic, Erica Wyman’s production livens in the second half.

Khalil appears to see little hope in the future as Bell dies in the empty display cabinet, a central design feature, and Hussein gives up on her hopeless task to return to London.

Apart from Houda Echouafni, who as Ghalia’s assistant Layla creates a sense of the real predicament faced by those surviving in the hell that US and British intervention has created in Iraq, the cast have difficulty in breathing life into what are largely representative characters.

Khalil's is a play full of interest and relevance, yet it never quite sparks into real theatre.

Runs until January 25, box office: rsc.org and transfers to The Kiln Theatre, London, in April next year.