Khoury sketches personalities for the characters - rounded out by Francis Benhamou as Leyla, a chatterbox neighbor - quickly and deftly. As the play begins, Taroon’s wife is in labor and he must weigh the risk of seeing her.Ī structural marvel, “Selling Kabul” can sometimes sound a little hollow at its core. Separated from his pregnant wife, he passes his days surreptitiously watching television and checking the status of his special immigrant visa - when the Wi-Fi works, anyway. For months they have shared the apartment with a third roommate, Taroon (Dario Ladani Sanchez), Afiya’s brother, who spends many of his waking hours in the living room closet.Īt some point in the past, Taroon worked as a translator for the American forces, which has made him a target of the Taliban. The setting, by Arnulfo Maldonado, is the nice enough Kabul apartment where Afiya (Marjan Neshat) lives with her husband, Jawid (Mattico David), a tailor and storekeeper. The time is 2013, 12 years after the beginning of America’s “forever war” in Afghanistan, eight years before its unceremonious close and a moment in which the United States has radically reduced its troop presence. You could bounce a quarter off it - or given its provenance, a five-afghani coin - and then throw yourself down to recover your nerves, which the drama will have absolutely mangled. Sylvia Khoury’s “Selling Kabul,” a 95-minute thriller that opened on Monday at Playwrights Horizons, is a play as tautly made as a military bed.
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