To be transparent, I was expecting something a bit different when I went into the CIBC Theater for this compelling, extremely well-acted production of the play “The Kite Runner,” adapted by Matthew Spangler from Khaled Hosseini’s popular 2003 novel.
Non-musical touring plays are extremely uncommon these days, and given that this production, directed by Giles Croft, had played in London and on Broadway, I was expecting something … bigger. Something more visually spectacular — particularly in crucial scenes involving kite-flying — or that found a unique way to theatricalize the sweeping story about a boy who grows up in Kabul, Afghanistan, before the country descended into failed-state status, and then returns as an adult seeking redemption for a wrong he committed.
I was surprised but not disappointed. This piece, it turns out, is quite modest, but I found that modesty — the focus on the central character’s interior journey, the clarity of the relationships, the novel’s language, the spare rather than the spectacular — to have its own beguiling charms.
Part of the novel’s appeal, as well as the so-so 2007 movie and this play version, undoubtedly stems from its taking us someplace mostly unfamiliar, a Middle Eastern country with a complex history of strife, and a way of thinking about the world — in tribal terms — so different from our own. Works like this humanize people who feel so very distant, although choosing exactly who to humanize among the options has its own decidedly political angle. When the film was produced, the child actors had to be moved out of Afghanistan due to death threats, and exactly who was so offended by a scene of sexual assault shows us perhaps how different our world views are.
“The Kite Runner” is not really a political novel, even if its very existence has political context and meaning. It’s a twisty, entertaining, dark personal story, and it’s the quality of this storytelling that has sold over 30 million copies worldwide.
And this production captures that story very well. Unlike the film — also faithful to the core storyline — the boys are played by adults (this says something very specific about film vs. theater), and the play version allows the main character, Amir (Ramzi Khalaf), to narrate much of the story, speaking directly to the audience.
As a general rule, onstage narration — and there’s a lot of it here — can be considered a writer’s crutch, but in this case it works, because it places the core of this emotionally tricky, potentially depressing tale firmly in Amir’s mind. First and foremost, this is a piece about guilt and personal redemption. Amir commits an act of betrayal so terrible that it defines his identity. By letting us into Amir’s sphere so forcefully, Khalaf’s performance pulls off the essential quality of being hard enough on himself that the audience can sympathize even after we witness the betrayal.
“The Kite Runner” tells a story in basically three parts, following Amir’s childhood in Kabul with his charismatic, physically imposing, and hard-to-please father, whom he calls Baba (Haythem Noor), and his best friend Hassan (Shahzeb Zahid Hussain). Amir and Hassan are inseparable, but the relationship is far from equal. They are of different ethnic groups (Pashtun and Hazara, respectively) and classes. Hassan is Amir’s servant, younger than Amir but also deeply protective of him.
The second part of the story involves Amir and his father escaping from Afghanistan to America, San Francisco to be specific (the play version captures the culture shock simply and even more effectively than either the book or film). For Amir, it’s a fresh start; for Baba, it’s intensely difficult, a man of prominence finding himself deeply humbled but resilient. The final part sends Amir, now an adult, a published writer and married (his wife is played by Awesta Zarif), back to Afghanistan as an act of redemption, seeking to save Hassan’s son from the Taliban, and thus, in essence, to save himself from his intense internal shame that has never gone away.
Making hard but necessary sacrifices (I really missed some courtship scenes), focusing the entire first act on the childhood scenes and then depicting the rest at a fast pace, Spangler and Giles keep “The Kite Runner” highly involving throughout. The staging is elegant and always lucid, with a simple set from Barney George using fence posts as a background for William Simpson’s projections. A drummer (tabla artist Salar Nader) sits onstage and provides an effective accompaniment to signal both change of place and rising action.
Although all the performances are excellent, Khalaf is our guide throughout this entire evening, and he provides a wonderfully complex portrayal, able to keep us with him both narratively and emotionally.
And, ultimately, making this modest production feel bigger by making it feel deeper.