The Kite Runner

Play (2007)
by Matthew Spangler
based on the novel by Khaled Hosseini

With: Ken Baltin (Baba), Paige Clark (Soraya), Scott Fortier (Rahim Khan), Fahim Hamid (Young Amir), Ahmad Maksoud (Kamal), Johnnie McQuarley (Ali), Luke Murtha (Hassan, Sohrab), Nael Nacer (Amir), Robert Najarian (Wali), Dale Place (General Taheri), Fred Williams (Musician), John Zdrojeski (Assef)

Amir (Nael Nacer), as an adult in the United States, tells the story of his youth in Afghanistan. Much of its emotional force centers around a traumatic event which occurs when he is a young boy. How he recalls that event and its contexts, and how, as an adult, he follows upon its effects, frames the general structure of the work.

This story of both the child and the adult Amir told in the novel by Khaled Hosseini is rich, complex and full of twists and turns. It lends itself naturally to a dramatic rendition and it is to the credit of the playwright who adapted it, Matthew Spangler, to have brought this to the stage with an economically and tautly written script. Though this is a long play and covers much narrative terrain, its power builds as it goes along and it generates significant and satisfying dramatic tension.

Overall, this production is exceptionally well done.

The sets and the staging are efficiently conceived, but very dramatic.

A scene with a stage full of flying kites is beautiful and dazzling. An Afghani-style market, set in California, erupts colorfully and energetically. And the vision of a group cramped in the body of an oil truck – depicted like the skeleton of a large whale – is haunting and very effective.

Fight scenes are choreographed very capably, with a real sense of brutality and action.

Acting is fine all around.

Nael Nacer, who I have seen a few times, memorably in Animal Crackers at the Lyric Stage and in 1001 at Company One in 2011, plays the adult Amir. He very adeptly embodies a sense of historical torment wrapped in the ambiguous warmth of the present. This actor has an innately light charm that might well override the sort of internal conflict that Amir must convey, but he pulls it off convincingly.

Luke Murtha, as Hassan, and later on as Sohrab, gives a well articulated sense of vulnerability and sacrifice.

Ken Baltin as Baba is blustery, judgmental and proud in a completely believable way.

John Zdrojeski (Assef) is a dramatic standout. He has an insistent ferocity that makes his role at once hateful and totally compelling.

It is always interesting to see if a playwright and a production can pull off the adaptation of a novel in the relatively short space of a single evening at the theater.

Some of the more successful attempts have been serialized over several nights – like the nine hour London and Broadway productions in the 1980s of Charles Dickens’ The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.

But here, with this adaptation of The Kite Runner, we certainly have an example of a complex plot and a dramatic psychological story being rendered vividly, in an emotionally riveting but stimulating way, over the course of a long, but not too long, evening.

– BADMan