One of the best-loved and most highly acclaimed novels of our time, THE KITE RUNNER is a powerful play of friendship that follows one man’s journey to confront his past and find redemption. Afghanistan is a divided country and two childhood friends are about to be torn apart. It’s a beautiful afternoon in Kabul and the skies are full of the excitement and joy of a kite flying tournament. But neither of the boys can foresee the incident which will change their lives forever. Told across two decades and two continents, THE KITE RUNNER is an unforgettable journey of redemption and forgiveness, and shows us all that we can be good again.
But it had been too long since I'd last seen this kind of tearjerky TED talk, and it's a genre I did not particularly miss. It's a fascinating-enough story, if only because its healthy heapings of melodrama demand the seriousness post-9/11 white guilt. But its hurried second act doesn't deliver on the first's more in-depth investigations of class, ethnicity, and of who gets to escape versus who must stay in a decaying country. Facing this narrative in 2022, I'd just as soon leave it on the school reads table at Barnes & Noble.
Director Giles Croft, who also helmed the hit U.K. production, moves things along rather well on a smartly sparse set (carpets and crates are just about the only adornments you'll spot). And the gifted tabla artist Salar Nader, onstage throughout the entire show, provides dramatic accompaniment in just the right spots. One curious directorial choice: The second act features a silhouetted reenactment of a cold-blooded killing behind a curtain, which produces an incongruous puppet-show effect. Perhaps it's an effort to interrupt the constant, sometimes draggy, narration, but in that case, telling us that the Taliban shot someone in the back of the head in the street would be dramatic enough.
Videos