Soaring Success

This is something special.

Arizona Theatre Company’s stage adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s
novel The Kite Runner is so moving, so well-crafted and so
visually stunning that it’s hard to imagine how the rest of the ATC
season can follow this act.

Theater combines story and language with visuals and performance. It
has music, movement and dance. In ATC’s version of The Kite
Runner, each of these elements is executed so expertly and combined
so skillfully that we are utterly captivated, heart and soul. This is
the power of theater.

Matthew Spangler, an assistant professor of performance studies at
San José State University, read the novel just after its
publication in 2003 and recognized that it could work as a piece of
theater. Several years later, he met with Hosseini to discuss the
possibility of an adaptation, and the author was enthusiastic.

Spangler’s stage adaptation was mounted by San José Repertory
Theatre last spring. ATC artistic director David Ira Goldstein was
enlisted to direct, and it’s the San José production that has
been remounted here, under his direction, with very little change.

It’s always dicey, this adaptation thing, especially when the book
has found such a devoted audience. (The book was made into a movie in
2007.) Fear not. As a play, The Kite Runner is fully respectful
of the book. As a piece of theater, it soars like the kites so central
to the novel.

The staged version is surely as involving, disturbing and expansive
as the book. But theater provides elements unavailable on the written
page, or even in a cinematic rendering. There is a sense of immediacy,
of transparency. The interaction of live actors and audience builds
something together. As staged, this prism of a story catches and
reflects the brilliance unique to the theater.

At the center of this story is the friendship of two Afghani boys,
who have grown up together in the same home in Kabul. They are of
different Muslim sects, and of different classes. Amir, through whose
eyes the story is told, and his father, Baba, are the privileged ones;
Hassan and his father, Ali, are their servants.

Amir cowardly betrays his best friend. He projects his shame so
maliciously onto Hassan that the boy and his father leave Baba’s home,
after 40 years of service.

Years later, after Amir and Baba have moved to California and
re-established their lives there, Amir receives a telephone call from
an old and trusted friend. He claims there is a way for Amir to “be
good again,” but Amir must return to the home of his childhood. He does
so, but only reluctantly. Then his journey spins and plunges and
catapults him in ways he could never have imagined and for which he is
woefully unprepared. It is heartbreaking. But, then, the road to
redemption usually is.

Director Goldstein manages this epic story with a sure hand and a
light touch. He has assembled a uniformly skillful cast; most of the
actors play numerous roles.

But the guide through this tale of friendship, betrayal and the
possibility of redemption is Barzin Akhavan as Amir. He is totally
committed to this hugely demanding role, in which he is both narrator
and character. He demonstrates great skill in his transformation from
one to the other, and he never leaves the stage.

However, Akhavan’s performance takes a bit of getting used to.
Initially, he overreaches; he is too broad. But in the second act, he
is more character than narrator, and as he settles into grown-up Amir,
he feels much more real. Ultimately, he wins our hearts.

Visually, this production is a treasure, thanks to scenic designer
Vicki Smith and lighting/projection designer David Lee Cuthbert. From
the blue sky and patchwork of colorful kites in the opening to the
freeway signs that put us undeniably in California, to the projections
of a savaged land when Amir returns home to Afghanistan, the settings
are like a gently rotating kaleidoscope. They not only support the
story; they are a crucial element in the telling of it.

Kish Finnegan’s costumes, which range from traditional dress
reproduced with great authenticity to the jeans and T-shirts of the
1980s, do more than help define the characters. They contribute to the
production’s visual impact.

The Kite Runner would be so much less without composer Salar
Nader’s percussive accompaniment on the tabla drum. He sits on the
apron of the stage, responding to the action, sometimes seeming to
direct it. Never intrusive, his playing is a perfect soundtrack.

The entire production is carefully choreographed. Set pieces and
props for numerous scenes glide into place and out again without ever
interrupting the flow of the action. Sets appear and disappear
unobtrusively. We see it all, but everything appears
seamless—even as we see the seams. This is theater magic, and we
rarely see it executed so artfully.

The Kite Runner is heartfelt and stunning, a sensuous piece
of alchemy put together by collaborators who understand the formula for
great theater.

It is something special.

This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2009.