Theatre in Review: Selling Kabul (Playwrights Horizons)Taroon, the young Afghan at the center of Sylvia Khoury's new play, is a man without a country. Previously, he worked as a translator for US troops, but it is 2013, the Obama Administration is reducing its military presence in the country, and a resurgent Taliban seeks revenge on anyone deemed a collaborator. Taroon has spent four months in hiding, holed up in the apartment belonging to his sister, Afiya, and her husband, Jawid. It's a punishing way of life: Left alone for long hours, he is eaten up with boredom and anxiety. A knock at the door sends him in a living room closet. As he awaits the long-promised, yet ever-receding, news from America granting him immigrant status, his wife is in the hospital, giving birth to their first child. He has a plan for a quick visit, disguised in a burqa, to see his newborn son, but Afiya insists that the risk is too great. She doesn't yet know it, but she is drastically understating the case. In Selling Kabul, Khoury employs the basic tools of stage thrillers to evoke the plight of a family caught in deadly political crossfire. She makes especially strong use of concealment: With Taroon hidden away, a visit from Leyla, Afiya's nosy, talkative longtime friend, becomes an exercise in sustained, slow-burning suspense. Leyla knows something is up and she resents that Afiya, her casual manner stretched to the breaking point, is, after all these years, suddenly keeping secrets from her. The simple business of Leyla looking around for a sweater -- will she open the wrong door? -- carries the threat of exposure and ruin. Between Taroon, who feels that his captivity is a stain on his manhood, and the intrusive, boundary-pushing Leyla, Afiya has her hands full. But she and Jawid, who run a tailoring business, are playing a double game: Trying to deflect the Taliban, they make military uniforms, an activity that leaves Taroon infuriated and feeling betrayed. Given the strain of concealing her brother and placating the men who would kill him, it's little wonder that Afiya is having difficulty conceiving. (She and Jawid are childless, a longtime source of sorrow.) Then Jawid returns with dire news that forces a decision: Taroon must flee the country immediately. Of course, Afiya and Jawid, frantically playing all the angles, are in contact with a human smuggler. Director Tyne Rafaeli maintains an atmosphere of tension as thick as a summer heatwave, aided by a fine quartet of actors. First among them is Marjan Neshat as Afiya, whose pragmatic, minute-by-minute handling of this impossible situation is marked by a profound fatalism and cold fury. The impulsive, hotheaded Taroon would be a handful under any circumstances, but Dario Ladani Sanchez makes him a touchingly lost figure, vainly hoping for a rescue that may or may not be coming. Francis Benhamou's Leyla is equally charming, needy, and suspicious, a smiling interloper who doesn't grasp that she is treading on dangerous ground. Mattico David brings a distinct gravitas to war-weary, self-lacerating Jawid. As tense and involving as Selling Kabul is, however, one wishes that certain inconsistencies had been ironed out in the months since its thwarted March 2020 debut. Despite the apartment's paper-thin walls, the characters are often allowed to carry on at a volume that would put the entire neighborhood on high alert. Despite the constant fear that Taroon's use of the TV and computer might give away his presence, nobody ever closes the window or draws the blinds. And a rush of events in the last fifteen minutes -- which sets up a major reconfiguration of the family -- feels slightly forced and artificial, addressing Taroon's fate and Afiya's fertility problems in a single stroke. Still, Khoury is a talent to watch; her previous play, Power Strip, was a significant improvement on its predecessor, Against the Hillside, and Selling Kabul is another big step forward. Through action, not speechmaking, she grippingly evokes the life-or-death dilemma of Afghans caught between a brutal, intolerant theocratic regime and a United States losing interest in its self-advertised role as savior. The production, in Playwright's Horizons' upstairs Peter Jay Sharp Theater, benefits from the authenticity of Arnulfo Maldonado's set design -- under-furnished by Western standards, with cushions instead of chairs, and featuring Islamic decor on the walls and ceiling -- complemented by the lighting of Jen Schriever and Alex Fetchko, which is largely cued off the practical units onstage. (One reservation: For several minutes, light coming through the doorway of the offstage bedroom bounces off a living room mirror, creating an unintentional blinder effect.) Montana Levi Blanco's costumes show a solid grasp of the everyday wear of another culture. Lee Kinney's sound design includes a bone-rattling evocation of aircraft directly above the audience. In her program notes, Khoury makes the point that her Jewish Algerian grandfather experienced a not-dissimilar situation in France during World War II when, for a time, he was stripped of his citizenship. Clearly, the world is not getting better in this regard. The idea of being denied protection in one's home country is deeply disturbing; indeed, the fight to live another day can drive one to commit all sorts of desperate acts. Near the end of the play, Jawid, reproaching himself for his appeasing ways, says, "I have sold Kabul for a television set." Especially given the recent US abandonment of Afghanistan, is there anyone in the audience who dares to judge him? --David Barbour 
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