Mattico David (left) is Jawid, an Afghan tailor, and Marjan Neshat is Afiya, his wife, in Sylvia Khoury’s Selling Kabul.
Selling Kabul, Sylvia Khoury’s play currently running at Playwrights Horizons, is significant and timely. Although written in 2015, the drama’s focus on the collateral damage of the pullout of U.S. forces in Afghanistan is even more urgent in light of President Biden’s complete withdrawal three months ago. Significant, timely, and urgent do not, however, necessarily make for great theater. To its credit, Selling Kabul does not minimize the political and ideological concerns, but it offers an impressively riveting, suspenseful, and deeply moving portrayal of four complex individuals caught up in the sweep of national turmoil.
The play centers around Taroon (Dario Ladani Sanchez), an Afghan and former interpreter for the U.S. military. With the departure of the allied troops and the Kabul takeover by the Taliban, Taroon is forced to hide in the small one-bedroom apartment occupied by his sister Afiya (Marjan Neshat) and her husband Jawid (Mattico David), a tailor. Taroon is convinced that even after four months in sequestration, visas for him, his wife, and their newborn baby are forthcoming. After all, his friend and army officer, simply named Jeff, had promised that the Americans would repay the Afghans who put their lives at risk.
David as Jawid reluctantly welcomes his inquisitive neighbor Leyla (Francis Benhamou) into his apartment, where he and his wife are harboring an enemy of the Taliban.
Afiya is less optimistic, telling her brother, “Jeff is not your friend. Jeff got to go home to America. Jeff abandoned you.” Rather than counting on the Americans for help, she and her husband have developed a practical, measured plan for helping Taroon escape. Additionally, in order to eliminate suspicions of their aiding and abetting a war criminal, Afiya and Jawid demonstrate support for the Taliban by making army uniforms.
As the play progresses, the hunt for Taroon becomes even more intense, and he poses a danger not just to his family but to their larger circle of friends. Even Afiya and Jawid’s nosy neighbor Leyla (Francis Benhamou) finds herself caught up in the Taliban manhunt. No spoilers here, but the play does end with some glimmers of hope even as the new regime threatens complete control over the people in Kabul.
Under the outstanding direction of Tyne Rafaeli, the cast is uniformly excellent. Sanchez downplays the heroism of a national defender forced into hiding and highlights the character’s complex mix of affability, impetuousness, and obstinance. In fact, his Taroon is at times something of a jerk as the character carelessly puts the people around him in the crosshairs of the enemy. Neshat is very moving as a woman whose life is defined by duplicity and moral compromise. As her husband, David presents a compassionate figure trying to negotiate the logistics of a seemingly impossible escape, and as the neighbor, Benhamou strikes just the right balance between insinuating and supportive.
The production’s chief strength is its ability to maintain the humanness of the characters even as the play becomes an edge-of-one’s-seat thriller. Indeed, there are elements of Hitchcockian suspense in its escalating tension, which is further intensified by restricting the action to the Kabul apartment and presenting the events in real time. Notably, there are only a few times in which the dramaturgical mechanics, such as a telltale stitch in a mended garment, call attention to the authorial hand behind the play.
Benhamou and Neshat in a tense exchange. Photographs by Joan Marcus.
The design elements help immeasurably in establishing the atmospheric apprehension. Arnulfo Maldonado’s set, for instance, perfectly captures the ordinariness of a lived-in, middle-class Afghan home, and Montana Levi Bianco’s costumes reflect the clash of cultures and politics. Strikingly, though, the lighting design by Jen Schriever and Alex Fetchko and the sound design by Lee Kinney offer periodic and jarring reminders of the dangers outside. As the play hurtles to its climax, there is a distinct impression that the walls of the apartment are closing in on the characters.
Selling Kabul is as absorbing as it is thought-provoking. Audiences may recall the shocking scenes of men, women, and children desperately trying to escape from the airport in Kabul. The images were almost instantly politicized, and the real-life human toll was quickly forgotten. In a brisk 95 minutes, Khoury and the production’s company of actors tap into the horrors, despair, and national cataclysm the U.S. helped to forge. While Afghanistan currently does not take up much airtime in the media, the play with its depiction of lives ruptured by American breaches of faith reveals the humanitarian exigency of the ongoing situation.
Sylvia Khoury’s Selling Kabul plays through Dec. 23 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons (416 W 42nd St). For tickets, COVID guidelines, and performance schedule, visit playwrightshorizons.org.
