‘The Kite Runner’ Broadway Review: Earnest Adaptation Of Beloved Novel Struggles To Soar
22.07.2022 - 04:11
/ deadline.com
Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 bestselling novel The Kite Runner is the sort of compelling, epic morality tale that spans eras and cultures, depicts friendship and betrayal, loyalty and cowardice, acts of kindness and demonstrations of unspeakable cruelty. With its eye on an all-but-guaranteed redemption, The Kite Runner has an unmistakable allure – equal parts beach read and Serious Literature – that proved irresistible to Hollywood and, now, Broadway.
While the 2012 film adaptation made an early splash with some critics (followed by a backlash over some controversial scenes involving the depiction of child sexual abuse), The Kite Runner, despite its earnest, prestige sheen, got little more than shrugs at awards time. Today it’s remembered mostly for the controversy.
The latest incarnation, adapted by Matthew Spangler, opens tonight at Broadway’s Hayes Theater under the direction of Giles Croft. Despite its heartfelt intentions and some impressive performances, The Kite Runner doesn’t improve in any significant way over The Kite Runner on screen. And it’s a whole lot talkier.
At times seeming more like an elaborately staged reading of the novel – an audio book come to life – than a fully realized play, The Kite Runner tells the story (and “tells” is the operative word) of Amir (winningly played by Amir Arison) over the course of a couple decades. When we first meet him, he’s a child of 1970s Kabul, the sensitive, poetry-loving son of a gruff, wealthy Pashtun patriarch (Faran Tahir). Baba, the father, loyally employs a longtime servant who is of the largely disdained Hazara ethnic group. The servant’s young son, Hassan (Eric Sirakian), is raised almost – almost – as a brother to Amir, and while the gulf between their social
The website popstar.one is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can
send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.