FIRST OFF . . .

The Royal Court Theatre in London will open a British play next week that has been branded by Iran as scurrilous and a satanic sequel to the Salman Rushdie affair. The theater denied Thursday that it risks provoking Muslim anger with “Iranian Nights,” a new work by English playwright Howard Brenton and Tariq Ali, an Oxford-educated Pakistani who, like Rushdie, was born a Muslim. “Iranian Nights” was written as a direct response to the plight of Rushdie, a naturalized British citizen born in India, whose novel, “The Satanic Verses,” provoked a death threat from Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Rushdie has been in hiding since then. “As far as I’m concerned the intention is to contribute positively to debate, and to educate and enlighten,” said Simon Curtis, the theater’s deputy director. He declined to discuss the play’s contents. According to advance reviews in the British press, in “Iranian Nights,” Scheherazade tells of a poet who writes a set of verses that anger a “Holy Man” in a land once called Persia, providing him with a cause with which to unite his people after a war. The play is set to begin a 10-day run on Wednesday.