Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 novel The Kite Runner has proved one of the runaway hit books of the 21st century, and has since featured everywhere from Hollywood films to exam syllabuses. This simple, at times limited production originated in Nottingham Playhouse, before transferring to the West End’s Playhouse Theatre in June. The Kite Runner tells the story of Amir, son to a wealthy family living in Kabul, and his friendship with Hazara boy Hassan. When Amir fails a crucial test of this friendship, he is propelled through a twenty-year journey towards finding redemption and learning to stand his ground.
Set across numerous backdrops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and America on a twenty-year timeline, the novel presents myriad challenges to the adaptor - a scene featuring the rape of a twelve-year-old perhaps the least enviable - and having never read the book, I was reliant on Matthew Spangler’s text and Giles Croft’s production to mediate. Croft sets up a Brechtian canvas against which to tell it: a bare space, setpiece ritualistic moments (dances, weddings, market stalls), simple design features, shifts of time and space told through walking in a circle. There are moments when it really takes off. The sound design, while a little repetitive in parts, is highly effective elsewhere, particularly in its use of wooden slingshot-esque devices to create the sound of wind, weather, and flight. A couple of moments of storytelling through shadow-play against the set’s giant kite-wings are also strong.
Spangler’s adaptation leans heavily on the device of frequent narration by Amir to the audience. While this allows us to experience Hosseini’s expression and imagery unadulterated, it’s often at serious risk of telling, not showing. The text gets into every scene quick and out even quicker, preventing us from experiencing much beyond the basic building blocks of the story.
David Ahmad is excellent in the role of Amir, but he’s hamstrung by the decision to have him play the first act like a 12-year-old, leading to some moments worryingly more reminiscent of Citizen Khan than of other recent page-to-stage hits such as War Horse and 1984 (to which the Playhouse also recently played host). The staging seems to have been put together for maximum appeal to children and young adult audiences, and while one worries about the danger of talking down to this audience, it will doubtless land well here.
It picks up more energy, and a cheeky glance to the audience, with the move to America, and the second half as a whole feels like a step up from the first. The cathartic final act in particular packs serious punch, and while one yearns at times for something a bit smarter in the adaptation than just recreating its sequence of events with bursts of narration, it’s still a great story. This, in the end, is what shines through, and earned the show its standing ovation - on the same night as the attack on the Muslim community a few miles north in Finsbury Park.
A satisfactory, competent production of the bestselling novel which tells its story accurately and effectively.
Photo by Irina Chira
It’s been a bit of roller-coaster ride at the Globe Theatre this year.