HOMEBODY/KABUL. To 22 June.
London
HOMEBODY/KABUL
by Tony Kushner
Cheek by Jowl and Young Vic Theatre. At the Young Vic To 22 June 2002
Mon-Sat 7pm Mat Sat 1pm
Runs 3hr 50min Two intervals
Women's night in Kabul at the Young Vic, though with much of the later action overtaken by reportage.Publicity for the revived Cheek by Jowl's Kushner production comes festooned with glowing reviews of the New York Theatre Workshop production last December. It's hard not to see some of this enthusiasm bouncing off the September 11 catastrophe.
Difficult, too, when characters talk of American attacks and Kabul being reduced to rubble, to remember the script was written before the twin-towers crumbled. But the play's opening – a titanic solo for Kika Markham's Homebody – sweeps over 3,000 years of the Afghan region's history.
A bookish, spinsterish sort, this Homebody, except there's a husband the other end of a strained relationship, and a grown-up daughter. She has acquired an old guide to Afghanistan, and, steadied by the even keel of her own life, calmly pursues the invasions, uprisings and wars rocking the mountainous region's history.
Markham offers an object lesson in drawing an audience in to her character's world. A domestic detail or a country's upheaval stitch seamlessly into her magnetic narrative.
Then Kushner supposes her uprooting her life, visiting Afghanistan. It's fatal for her, and doesn't do much for the play. Husband and daughter go for the body. Despite some narrative touches, is-she/isn't-she alive/dead, the main thrust is to have what's been hinted, blazoned luridly by thinly characterised figures.
William Chubb personifies English ordinariness in every grey outline. Jacqueline Defferary works hard on the arrogant and foolish daughter's behalf, but can hardly lift her off the dramatist's drawing-board. A western woman facing a rifle's end for smoking in a Kabul street is neither news nor dramatic development these days.
And Mark Bazeley's American, western decadence full of Afghan low-down but hanging around for highs on the local dope, is another character nailed to the drawing-board.
Only Souad Faress' Mahala, the educated Afghan shouting her fury at the treatment of women and seeking western asylum, matches, by contrast, Markham's character. It's ironic, given Talikban rule, that the women dominate Kushner's play. For the rest, read the newspapers.
Donnellan's stark production magnifies the play's qualities. His scrupulous detail, like Nick Ormerod's plain, open staging, allows virtues to speak, and shortcomings to be exposed.
The Homebody: Kika Markham
Dr Qari Shah/Border Guard: Antony Bunsee
Mullah Ali Aftar Durrani: Kevork Malikyan
Milton Ceiling: William Chubb
Quango Twistleton: Mark Bazeley
Priscilla Ceiling: Jacqueline Defferary
Munkrast/Zai Garshi/Marabout: Silas Carson
Mahala: Souad Faress
Kwaja Aziz Mondanabosh: Nadim Sawalha
Director: Declan Donnellan
Designer: Nick Ormerod
Lighting: Judith Greenwood
Music: Paddy Cuneen
Movement: Jane Gibson
Sound: Paul Arditti
Assistant Director: Edward Dick
Sponsor: Prospect
2002-05-28 07:56:31