Andrei Costin and Ben Turner in The Kite Runner. Photo: Robert Workman
THE KITE RUNNER
at Wyndham’s Theatre
MATTHEW Spangler’s effective stage adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s best selling novel (already a successful film) had its British premier in Nottingham in 2014.
It comes into the West End under the same director, Giles Croft, with the same leading actors and has no need of starry names for its direct and powerful retelling of this tale of two young Afghans. Amir, son of a wealthy Pashtun Sunni merchant, and Hassan, son of the family’s Hazara Shia servant, are best friends as children until the ethnic arrogance of others leads to a grave betrayal.
Ben Turner, as Amir, narrates the story, looking back to childhood before becoming the 12-year old in the scene he is describing, conversing with Andrei Costin’s Hassan in Farsi before the dialogue slips into English.
It is a direct and simple staging: a shallow basin, backed by a palisade that could be a yard fence or silhouetted skyscrapers against the sky, kite shapes that fan down to change the background and painterly projections.
There is a mimed kite battle, when glass sharpened strings cut down rivals, that stirs the imagination and echoes the savagery of ethnic cruelties, the brutal rape of Hassan and the effect of Amir’s guilty lying.
Although it spans 30 years, from 1975, through the Russian invasion (when Amir and his father flee the country to build a new life in California) to when the Taliban were in control, this isn’t a lesson in Afghan history. It is a very moving personal story, sincerely acted by a fine cast that includes Emilio Doorgasingh as Amir’s father, disappointed that he prefers poetry to football but full of pride when he wins the kite fight, Nicholas Khan as his friend and Amir’s kindly mentor, Faroque Khan as Hassan’s father Ali and Nicholas Karimi as bully Assef who rapes Hassan.
It can’t pack in all the detail of the book or offer the landscapes of the movie but offers a theatrical experience and an emotional impact well worth sharing.
UNTIL MARCH 11 0844 482 5120
