Thanks to the likes of Robert Breen, Frank Galati and Mary Zimmerman, Chicago theater long has been famous for its dramatic interpretations of novels. The list is long: “The Grapes of Wrath,” “The Accidental Tourist,” “As I Lay Dying,” “The Sunset Limited.” In all of the above, the central dramatic problem was how to deal with the need for narration, reflecting the fundamental way in which a dialog-dependent play differs from narrative fiction.
That legacy, at once local to Evanston and international of import, came into my head Wednesday night as I watched the touring production of “The Kite Runner,” a show I’d previously reviewed on Broadway in 2022. It’s a (non-musical) adaptation of the justly celebrated debut novel by the Afghan American writer Khaled Hosseini, a harrowing story of displacement and betrayal set in Kabul, Afghanistan, Pakistan and San Francisco. Hosseini had a lot to say about the fate of Afghanistan at the hands of the Soviets, the Americans and the Taliban, but the core of the book really is about how the Pashtun narrator, Amir, fails to prevent a sexual assault happening to his loyal and vulnerable Hazara friend Hassan, and how the narrator’s compounding guilt then comes to define much of the rest of his life.
“The Kite Runner” is a powerful work, widely assigned in schools and famous following the 2007 film of the same name, but I find Matthew Spangler’s adaptation disappointing mostly because huge chunks of the storytelling are confined to the narrative voice, and because so little of the potential visual sweep of a story that draws on the ecstatic experience of flying a kite made it onto the stage. The touring show, which has a smaller physical production than was the case on Broadway, benefits greatly from an accomplished lead actor in Ramzi Khalaf, who carries the bulk of the storytelling, as well as two lovely performances from Shahzeb Zahid Hussain as Hassan and Haythem Noor as Baba, Amir’s demanding but loving father. Hussain especially is really something.
It’s true that Amir’s attempts to assuage his guilt, even though he was hardly the most to blame, are central to the work and this is both a father-son story and one of redemption. And, of course, Amir is the main authorial representative. But the use of that single narrative voice squeezes out the character who suffers most, which is Hassan, and as you watch this adaptation you constantly think how Hassan has been rendered almost like a cypher for another’s guilt and Amir’s point of view actually is not the one that matters the most here.
There’s nothing inherent wrong with a flawed narrator, of course, but the dialog-phobic adaptation, and to some degree the staging by director Giles Croft, tends to foregound it at the expense of everyone else. The production also lacks sensorial ambition; when a great novel is turned into a Broadway show, we expect a rush of what the theater does best, a sense of place and milieu, beautiful stage pictures, a racing theatrical pulse, a sense of additive life to what once just sat on the page.
This journeyman, sometimes pedestrian, version of “The Kite Runner” doesn’t have that level of ambition, despite its Broadway pedigree. Granted, it has its moments: I liked the touring cast very much indeed and I think the show is a good idea for a young person studying the book, for it will set the mind and heart racing when it comes to what (for me) is its central themes: the morality, or lack thereof, of self-protection if personal survival so demands and how individuals can and should love even when surrounded by oppression.
But it could have been so much more if only it had let others reveal more of their hearts.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “The Kite Runner” (2.5 stars)
When: Through June 23
Where: CIBC theatre, 18 W. Monroe St.
Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes
Tickets: $31.50-$115.50 at www.broadwayinchicago.com
