Asian Trips - Homebody/Kabul: Revised Version

"Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul is the most remarkable play in a decade . . . without a doubt the most important of our time."-John Heilpern, New York Observer

"This compelling evening testifies that Mr. Kushner can still deliver his sterling brand of goods: a fusion of politics, poetry and boundless empathy transformed through language into passionate, juicy theater . . . a reminder of how essential and heartening Mr. Kushner's voice remains."-Ben Brantley, New York Times

"Homebody/Kabul is a rich and intelligent piece."-Peter Brook

"Searing . . . Kushner's use of language and ideas continues to make us think about the deeper questions . . . he makes the political personal . . . a masterful conglomerate of words, ideas and history."-Mary Houlihan, Chicago Sun Times

In Homebody/Kabul, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America, has turned his penetrating gaze to the arena of global politics to create this suspenseful portrait of a dangerous collision between cultures. Written before 9-11, this play premiered in New York in December 2001 and has had subsequent highly successful productions in London, Providence, Seattle, Chicago and Los Angeles. This version incorporates all the playwright's changes over the past two years and is now the definitive version of the text.

Tony Kushner's plays include A Bright Room Called Day and Slavs!; as well as adaptations of Corneille's The Illusion, Ansky's The Dybbuk, Brecht's The Good Person of Szecguan and Goethe's Stella. Current projects include: Henry Box Brown or The Mirror of Slavery; and two musical plays: St. Cecilia or The Power of Music and Caroline or Change. He recently collaborated with Maurice Sendak on an American version of the children's opera, Brundibar. He grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and he lives in New York.

Tony Kushner was quoted and an excerpt was read from "Homebody/Kabul" at a local Not in Our Name event. His words and work resonate with the time.

Since I wrote the above review, I saw the play last night. It is even more powerful on stage. In the long Homebody monologue, it felt like the audience wanted to support Homebody, she seemed vulnerable alone on the stage for so long. Her comments made the audience laugh, nod in agreement, and feel her sadness.

The tone changed in the second half of the play and the audience seemed wrung out at the end with all the emotions and ideas to ponder. Whether read or watched, this play is exceedingly powerful. I highly recommend both.

Years of work and research are hung on the frame of a simple melodrama about a father and daughter searching in a strange country for a wife and mother. Kushner's mythical Afghanistan is a place where the tower of Babel toppled and people speak everything from Russian to Esperanto. The hapless British thrust into this burka'd world will never grasp that we in the west have "succumbed to luxury" -- though perhaps the audience will.

Some other reviewers found the Homebody's monologue dull on the page. I assure you it is quite stirring in performance. The same may be said of much of the play which, like Angels in America, is unwieldy but brilliant. Kushner has admitted in interviews that the play should be trimmed but I think, when reading the play, the overambitiousness is a plus. Kushner is a playwright with a social consciousness, but also a literary and poetic conscientiousness. The use of 'sunny' as an adjective recalls Sunni and the etymology of Quango's name is a play unto itself.

This play is 'about' too many things to effectively say what it is about. I appreciate it as a feast of language and a virtuoso display of Kushner's talent. While it may run long and fail to cohere thematically, it is shorter and more thematically coherent than Angels. What is a clusterbomb in the theater is chocolate cake when iced with covers.