“I’m not really here for the theatrical entertainment,” a friend of mine said as we settled in to watch Part II of The Great Game. “I’m here because I think I ought to know more about Afghanistan than I do.”
Virtue is always rewarded; we were about to see the most entertaining of the three parts to The Great Game.
If Part I dealt with an Afghanistan we never knew, Part II, 1979-1996, Communism, the Mujahideen & the Taliban deals with an Afghanistan we dimly remember but do not fully understand. In 1978 a Communist, Nur Muhammad Taraki, took power and entered into a friendship agreement with the Soviet Union. A year later, the Soviets sent in the troops.
It may be hard to imagine this now, but in 1979 it was inconceivable that the Soviet Union would be unable to subdue a country somewhat smaller than Texas. Brutality is war’s stock in trade, and from Lenin to the time of the invasion, the Soviets were experts in brutality. In 1968 the Russian tanks had rolled into Czechoslovakia, and, twelve years earlier, into Hungary; in 1979 few imagined that Afghanistan would be any more difficult for them.
“You have to be realistic,” a CIA station chief (Rick Warden) says to a rebel commander (Danny Rahim) in Lee Blessing’s Wood for the Fire, one of Part II’s six component plays. “You’re fighting one of the most powerful land armies in the world.” But, as we know, the Afghans eventually did run the Soviet troops out and bring down the Soviet-backed government, setting off a chain reaction of events which led to the collapse of the second-most powerful country in the world.
None of this would have come about except for the armaments provided to the Afghan rebels by the United States. The Soviets had fought a war-by-proxy against the United States in Viet Nam, supplying both the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese regular Army with Russian-made arms, and the Americans were only too happy to return the favor in Afghanistan. To fight the Russians, we armed the men who would eventually become our bitterest enemies. We called them Freedom Fighters then; now we refer to them as the Taliban.
Blessing’s play explores the precursors of that irony. The United States has been funneling money for the rebels through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Office. Owens, the Station Chief and a product of the old school, wants to see the people who are using the US-bought arms. But this is impossible, demurs ISI Director General Akhtar (Vincent Ebrahim), who would rather talk about Pakistan’s longstanding grievances against India. Owens’ Deputy Karen (Cloudia Swann) does not share her boss’ scruples. She has seen satellite photos of wrecked Soviet planes and tanks, and that is sufficient to satisfy her that the money is being put to good use. But Owens wants to take the measure of the men he is helping to fight, and so arranges to spend time with a rebel commander (Rahim). He learns something that gives him pause.
“The Pakistanis know how hard we fight,” the Commander says. He is talking about the arms and money his men are getting from the ISI. “But do they give us as much as they give the others? No. For us, almost nothing.”
Owens asks why. “We’re not religious enough,” the Commander replies. “We don’t insult Americans the minute your back is turned.” Owens has discovered something we now generally understand to be true: the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, funneled most of the American funds to the most fundamentalist in the ranks of the Mujahideen. But, alas, Owens is transferred before he can put this knowledge to practical use, and Karen, his successor, doesn’t care who gets the money as long as she sees burned-out Soviet tanks with her morning coffee.
Those of you who saw A Walk in the Woods in this year’s Fringe know that Blessing is a master at geo-political dialogue. But as good as Wood for the Fire is, the two plays that follow it – David Greig’s Miniskirts of Kabul and The Lion of Kabul, by Colin Teevan – are better. The former is set in a UN compound in Kabul in 1996, where Najibullah (Daniel Rabin), the last Communist President of Afghanistan, sits under house arrest as Kabul – and all of Afghanistan – is about to fall to the Taliban. He is surprised by an unlikely interlocutor – a woman (Jemma Redgrave) who has imagined her way into his compound. The woman is a powerful imaginer: she conjures up a bottle of Johnny Walker and a TV playing a Spice Girls video, much to the deposed ruler’s delight. But her most powerful imaginative act, and Greig’s, is to make real the life and impending death of this clever, desperate man, through the use of an imaginary interview.
“Perhaps you could begin by describing where we are?” she asks, and when Najibullah protests that she know where she is she artlessly replies “Yes but pretend I don’t know. Paint me a picture.” Najibbullah does, of his life and times. He was probably the most politically adept of the four Communist Presidents of Afghanistan, but by the time he got to play the great game, many of his pieces were already missing and his king was under siege. He is stoic in defeat. Having told his story to the woman, he listens as she tells him a different one: the story of his ultimate fate. It is not pretty. This playlet benefits from excellent performances by both actors – Rabin is absolutely magnetic as the deposed ruler – and superb technical support, particularly from Tom Lishman’s sound.
Najibullah was known as the Ox, but the lion in The Lion of Kabul is a real lion, the one-eyed Marjan who roars and belches from a zoo enclosure offstage. It is there that Rabia (Shereen Martineau), a Director of Operations for a U.N. food-relief program, awaits news about two of her employees who disappeared after going out to a food-distribution point in the toxic waste dump that Taliban Afghanistan has become. Eventually a Mullah (Nabil Elouahabi) appears, in a teaching capacity: he means to instruct Rabia and her translator (Raad Rawi) in the new reality which the Mullahs have imposed on the nation, and also in the Taliban interpretation of Shari’ah, which reduces the law of Allah to the law of the jungle. Eventually we see a demonstration of that interpretation, in which the Mullah invites Rabia to participate and from which she cannot look away, as we cannot, so riveting is the story. Teevan has written a compelling piece, made even stronger by the performances, especially the electric Elouahabi. Kudos to director Indhu Rubasingham for the production’s impeccable timing, and, once again, Lishman’s sound design is superb.
Although Part II – Communism, the Mujahideen & the Taliban is full of heart-stopping drama and penetrating insight, the fourth major play (and the opening play of this segment), Black Tulips, almost takes us off the rails. The conceit is that we in the audience are fresh recruits into the Red Army, learning from various presenters the glorious adventures that await us in Afghanistan. Playwright David Edgar goes backwards in time, so that we hear the 1987 lecture, followed by the 1985 lecture, the 1984 lecture, the 1982 lecture and the lecture from 1981. The point is apparently that the Soviets did not learn from their mistakes, and were as naïve in 1987 as they were six years previous, but it is not exciting theater to see military officials repeat the same canned speeches over and over again. However, there is a brief presentation by a Captain in the mine-cleaning detail (Ebrahim) which is both funny and horrifying.
Communism, the Mujahideen & the Taliban is also graced by two short pieces by Siba Shakib. In Monologue, the ancient Queen Gohar Shahd (Sheena Bhattessa) spins out her vision of life as it could be in Afghanistan, in which women are nurtured and protected. The dream seems as remote today as it did in Queen Gohar’s time – and she was a daughter-in-law of Tamerlane. Duologue is a continuation of Part I’s Monologue, in which an artist who has depicted the history of his beautiful country (Ebrahim) is forced to defend his painting to a vicious Taliban soldier (Rahim), who objects to the depiction of faces. It will break your heart, and it, like most of Communism, the Mujahideen & the Taliban, will leave you sadder and wiser; edified, and entertained.
The Great Game, Part Two: 1979-1996, Communism, the Mujahideen & the Taliban, composed of:
Black Tulips
By David Edgar
Directed by Nicolas Kent
Monologue
By Siba Shakib
Directed by Indhu Rubasingham
Wood for the Fire
By Lee Blessing
Directed by Rachel Grunwald
Miniskirts of Kabul
By David Greig
Directed by Indhu Rubasingham
Duologue
By Siba Shakib
Directed by Nicolas Kent
The Lion of Kabul
By Colin Teevan
Directed by Indhu Rubasingham
Produced by Tricycle Theatre Company at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Harman Hall
Reviewed by Tim Treanor
The Great Game: Afghanistan continues thru Sept 26, 2010 at Sidney Harman Hall, Washington, DC.
Click here for details, directions and tickets.
Related:
Tim’s review of Great Game: Afghanistan, Part 1
Tim’s review of The Great Game: Afghanistan, Part 3
The national tour of The Great Game: Afghanistan
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