Bagdad Cafe review – a kooky cabaret on Route 66

Old Vic, London
Emma Rice’s version of the 1987 movie is an outrageously sentimental ode to friendship and oddballs meeting amid Californian tumbleweed

Just as Wim Wenders’ road movie put Paris, Texas on the map, this drama, based on the 1987 outback film Bagdad Cafe, draws our attention to Bagdad in California.

It is a ghost town along Route 66, tucked away in the Mojave Desert, and is the setting for the petrol station and pit-stop for truckers in which the abrasive cafe owner, Brenda (Sandra Marvin) and the lost German tourist, Jasmin (Patrycja Kujawska) meet. They strike up an unlikely friendship after both their marriages go awry and accrue a motley posse around them.