The Kite Runner (play)
The Kite Runner is a stage adaption of Afghan-American novelist Khaled Hosseini's 2003 book The Kite Runner. Aside from sharing the 2003 book as a source, it is unrelated to the 2007 film The Kite Runner. The play was adapted for the stage by Matthew Spangler and premiered at San Jose Repertory Theatre in 2009. A Broadway production starring Amir Arison as Amir and featuring Azita Ghanizada as Soraya, Eric Sirakian as Hassan/Sohrab, and Faran Tahir as Baba opened to very mixed reviews at the Hayes Theater on July 21, 2022. A national tour of the Broadway production by the same producers and director is set to embark in 2024; casting yet to be announced. Description The fast-paced play depicts most of what happens in the book. As in the book, The Kite Runner is narrated by Amir, who is obsessed with an "unatoned sin" he committed as a well-off child in 1970s Kabul: Amir betrayed his childhood friend, servant, and kite running partner Hassan when Amir's cowardice, and his desperate need to please his father, cause him to abandon Hassan in the face of a vicious and shocking attack by a neighborhood bully. In 2001, Amir has settled in America when he receives a call telling him: "There is a way to be good again." He then takes a dangerous trip, on the eve of the American invasion, into Taliban-controlled Kabul. Reception Broadway The Broadway production, directed by Giles Croft opened on 21 July 2022 and ran through 30 October 2022 at the Helen Hayes Theater was received with very mixed critical reviews. The New York Times Maya Phillips called the production "stiff" and lead actor Amir Arison's performance "spotty": Under Giles Croft’s direction, Arison’s Broadway debut proves spotty. He recites his opening lines with the stiffness of a child delivering a book report, and never totally eases into the role. . . The part would be tough work for any actor; Amir is onstage for the entire show, and the transitions between his middle-aged and younger selves, some three decades apart, require the kind of gymnastics that not every performer can stick.” Chris Jones of The New York Daily News referred to Croft's production as being "underwhelming . . . [with] overtly presentational direction . . . [and] mostly a disappointment.” Also pointing out “a strange flatness” to Spangler's adaptation. "Everything is too slow, too ponderous and, in the case of all of the actors playing multiple roles, their confusing trajectories were insufficiently thought out by the director." Charles Isherwood of The Wall Street Journal commented on Spangler's adaptation: “With the help of a superlative cast, led by Amir Arison, playing the central role of a character also named Amir, and lucid direction by Giles Croft, the Broadway production brings the largely gripping narrative to life, even if it cannot fully capture the textured complexity of Mr. Hosseini’s writing.” In his review for Deadline, Greg Evans states the production "seeming more like an elaborately staged reading . .