Homebody/Kabul
Mar. 11th, 2005 07:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidLast night I went to the Boston Theatre Works production of Homebody/Kabul (Tony Kushner), a play about an English wife and mother (of a grown child), lost in her life and escaping mostly into books, who decides to go to Kabul. Alone, in 1998. And vanishes, quite possibly dies. Her husband and daughter follow, to search for her, or her story, an explanation. None of which they get, truly.
What we get is the story of a family slowly gone calmly dysfunctional. Her leaving shakes the boat, and shows more of how things have gone wrong. And we get that story in the context of a city, a country gone wrong, as the fabled valley city of the Hindu Kush is now a partial ruin ruled by the iron fist of the Taliban.
It's a very interesting play, with wonderful use of language. The woman starts the play with a monologue that had more underused words than I could shake a stick at. She claims it's due to reading too many books :-). Fascinating, precise, polysyllabic confections rarely invited off the page, into the mouth, and they come trippingly off her tongue. She realizes that they obscure as well as illuminate, however (I kept wishing I could get a copy of the dialogue, to savor the words longer. And I can't remember all the lovely lines and turns of phrase that sparkled and wanted me to take them home.). And later in the play, once the setting has shifted to Kabul (in 1998), the languages vary, shifting to French, a bit of German, what I presume is Farsi and/or Pushto, even Esperanto, mostly translated for the less linguistically talented among us.
The program includes a lot of information about the Taliban rule, the history of Afghanistan, and its culture. The play provides more, and puts it in context. I found it unpleasant (as a woman I would be in a horrible situation were I there), but a bit familiar, having read not dissimilar things in Persepolis. And that side of the play worked, completely (to my reasonably uninformed eyes, anyway). The story of the family was not quite as fully fleshed out. I understood why she left the husband, but it wasn't as clear about the daughter, really. Merely touched upon early in the play, it becomes more central as the play continues, and the one note harped upon doesn't become a full explanation, to me, anyway. Still, a very intense, thoughtful, and thought-provoking play, well worth the time (almost three hours including intermissions).
Also, thinking a bit more, now, there are the questions of home, as well. What makes a home homey, a support, rather than a prison? Can someone from a wholly other place make a new place home? How quickly can that happen? Is home a place, or a set of connections with people, or a particular combination of the two? If two people swapped places, would it be home for either of them? What about the families involved? And so on.
The costumes were nicely done, contrasting modern Western garb with the long shirts and turbans or other head coverings of the men, and burkas for the women. I don't know why it was so much eerier to see the burka than the men's clothing, but it was. Eerie, but I still wanted to try one on, to see how seeing would happen through that little mesh square.
The set was very neat. We started with the homebody in a room in her house in London, looking rather like a doll's house room, cutaway in the front, though with an irregular front to the floor, and the rest of the set mostly swathed in black plastic, looking like an enormous garbage bag. It covered almost everything, except the three projection screens that had scenes from London or Kabul on them. They weren't used integrally, more as an additional hint, something to look at during set changes. Though I didn't look at the changing pictures during the first set change, as all the black plastic was sucked in under the floor of the house, revealing the rest of the set, light brown walls and floors, a doorway to another small area, a bed placed for the hotel room. The irregular front floor of the room folded up to be part of the wall. The lighting changed, opening from just that room to the rest of the area instead, and the room receded from our minds, mostly. Very nicely done.
What we get is the story of a family slowly gone calmly dysfunctional. Her leaving shakes the boat, and shows more of how things have gone wrong. And we get that story in the context of a city, a country gone wrong, as the fabled valley city of the Hindu Kush is now a partial ruin ruled by the iron fist of the Taliban.
It's a very interesting play, with wonderful use of language. The woman starts the play with a monologue that had more underused words than I could shake a stick at. She claims it's due to reading too many books :-). Fascinating, precise, polysyllabic confections rarely invited off the page, into the mouth, and they come trippingly off her tongue. She realizes that they obscure as well as illuminate, however (I kept wishing I could get a copy of the dialogue, to savor the words longer. And I can't remember all the lovely lines and turns of phrase that sparkled and wanted me to take them home.). And later in the play, once the setting has shifted to Kabul (in 1998), the languages vary, shifting to French, a bit of German, what I presume is Farsi and/or Pushto, even Esperanto, mostly translated for the less linguistically talented among us.
The program includes a lot of information about the Taliban rule, the history of Afghanistan, and its culture. The play provides more, and puts it in context. I found it unpleasant (as a woman I would be in a horrible situation were I there), but a bit familiar, having read not dissimilar things in Persepolis. And that side of the play worked, completely (to my reasonably uninformed eyes, anyway). The story of the family was not quite as fully fleshed out. I understood why she left the husband, but it wasn't as clear about the daughter, really. Merely touched upon early in the play, it becomes more central as the play continues, and the one note harped upon doesn't become a full explanation, to me, anyway. Still, a very intense, thoughtful, and thought-provoking play, well worth the time (almost three hours including intermissions).
Also, thinking a bit more, now, there are the questions of home, as well. What makes a home homey, a support, rather than a prison? Can someone from a wholly other place make a new place home? How quickly can that happen? Is home a place, or a set of connections with people, or a particular combination of the two? If two people swapped places, would it be home for either of them? What about the families involved? And so on.
The costumes were nicely done, contrasting modern Western garb with the long shirts and turbans or other head coverings of the men, and burkas for the women. I don't know why it was so much eerier to see the burka than the men's clothing, but it was. Eerie, but I still wanted to try one on, to see how seeing would happen through that little mesh square.
The set was very neat. We started with the homebody in a room in her house in London, looking rather like a doll's house room, cutaway in the front, though with an irregular front to the floor, and the rest of the set mostly swathed in black plastic, looking like an enormous garbage bag. It covered almost everything, except the three projection screens that had scenes from London or Kabul on them. They weren't used integrally, more as an additional hint, something to look at during set changes. Though I didn't look at the changing pictures during the first set change, as all the black plastic was sucked in under the floor of the house, revealing the rest of the set, light brown walls and floors, a doorway to another small area, a bed placed for the hotel room. The irregular front floor of the room folded up to be part of the wall. The lighting changed, opening from just that room to the rest of the area instead, and the room receded from our minds, mostly. Very nicely done.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-03-11 08:25 am (UTC)If'n you want, I can copy the monologue for you and send it - just email me your addy. gsbleeker@gmail.com
no subject
Date: 2005-03-11 09:26 am (UTC)(info; oh, and I can get you $5 off the ticket, too).
Y'know, I didn't really think about the marriage between strangers part, per se. Odd, now that I think of it, since that's rather the heart of it.
The actress playing the homebody did such an amazing job of the monologue; I'm not sure how it would seem flat on the page compared to what she did. Though reading all the words would be cool. Um, sure, thank you; the LJ e-address in my userinfo works.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-11 11:18 am (UTC)But Kushner, if anything, would get me there.
Expect the full text on Sunday.