David Freeman, director of the production, said, "The idea came from Saddam Hussein himself. He once portrayed himself as Nebuchadnezzar in a poster."
Freeman has also updated the plight of the Jews in the opera, making them Jews of the 1930s and '40s in order to connect them to contemporary anti-Semitism. "You can't do politics about yesterday's politics," he said. "Yesterday's politics wraps up the fish and chips. You have to make connections of the politics of the day."