Selling Kabul

Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Ensemble Theatre Company at the New Vic
Through February 19

From the fall of Saigon to the abandonment of the Kurds in Northern Syria, the U.S. has a dismal track record when it comes to the treatment of allies in war zones.

Sylvia Khoury’s Pulitzer-finalist play, Selling Kabul, now being presented by the Ensemble Theatre Company at the New Vic in Santa Barbara, centers around the plight of Taroon (Rishan Dhamija), an Afghan who, to his own detriment, has aligned himself with the Americans in his country. The action is set in 2013, when the American military presence in Afghanistan has been greatly reduced. Taroon, a translator, has been abandoned by his American “friends” and marked for death by the Taliban. Meanwhile, the promised exit visas for himself and his family have never arrived, nor are they likely to.

For the last four months, Taroon has been in hiding at his sister Afiya’s (Nitya Vidyasagar) apartment. To further complicate matters, Taroon’s pregnant wife has just given birth.

Afiya and her husband, Jawid (Beejan Land), have supported themselves making uniforms for the Taliban, which accounts for their relative prosperity in a time of such economic hardship. But if Jawid thinks that his cozy interactions with the Taliban will protect his family, he may have sadly underestimated the growing brutality of the oppressors. Meanwhile, Afiya’s neighbor Leyla (Christine Mirzayan) drops by at inopportune moments for tea and a chat, while Taroon sequesters in the closet.

Of course, the function of any drama is to build in intensity, and Kabul has more suspense than a Hitchcock retrospective. However, glaring problems crop up. Taroon’s insistence on visiting his wife and newborn son in the hospital, despite the fact that such a visit would doom not only him but his entire family, seems so appallingly reckless that it alienates us from his character — a psychological divide from which we never quite recover.

Frustrating, also, is the playwright’s occasional slip into the overly dramatic — a misstep that could have been partially redressed had director Nike Doukas kept the performances scrupulously naturalistic, the kind of underplayed interchanges that are almost tossed away. Instead, she allows certain actors to veer into the overblown and declamatory, while letting others swallow their lines at the expense of crucial plot points.

Despite its flaws, Selling Kabul is ultimately as deeply moving as it is harrowing. An edge-of-your seat thrill ride into the depressingly here-and-now, it’s a clarion warning for those who believe that such a dystopian hellscape, contrived by religious extremists, can’t happen here.

Ensemble Theatre Company at the New Vic, 33 W. Victoria St., Santa Barbara; Wed.–Thurs., 7:30 pm; Fri.–Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 2 pm (added performance Sat., Feb. 11, 4 pm); through Feb. 19. (805) 965-5400 or www.etcsb.org. Running time: 1 hour and 40 minutes with no intermission.