"The Great Game: Afghanistan' in New York

The year is 1929. The scene is a remote mountain road outside Kabul. Onstage, a king, his wife and father-in-law sit in a broken-down motorcar, marooned in the snow, abandoned by their driver, surrounded by darkness. Frightening sounds of gunshots from hostile tribes ring out around them. Will their driver return to save them— or to kill them? Will the British help them? Will the Soviets? What will become of this hunted leader and his war-torn country?

This striking image of a mountain-locked, leaderless, lawless nation— stalled in history, surrounded by danger, devastated by violence— is visceral and terrifying. The miracle of the unique theater production in which this scene takes place, The Great Game: Afghanistan, is that it sustains the power of this image for more than seven spellbinding hours, holding us in its grip and enlightening us (as never before in the theater) about this country's tumultuous past and tortured present.

The Great Game: Afghanistan is the daunting creation of the fearless Tricycle Theatre Company and its visionary artistic director, Nicolas Kent. Alarmed by the swing of world focus away from Iraq and onto another new arena of endless conflict, frustrated by the lack of information and public debate about it, Kent in 2008 commissioned a dozen contemporary playwrights (11 British, including David Edgar and Ron Hutchison, and the American Lee Blessing) to write a short play each about an aspect of Afghan history over the past two centuries.

Kipling named it

These 12 plays, spanning from 1842 to the present day, dramatize key events over a traumatic historic period during which foreign forces— first the British, then the Soviets, then, most recently and tragically, the U.S.— vie for power and control of Afghanistan. ("The Great Game" was the term ascribed by Rudyard Kipling to the rivalry between the British and the Russians for supremacy in Central Asia in the 19th and early 20th Century).

The production premiered at the Tricycle Theatre's home in London in 2009. Propelled by the tremendous response from critics and audience alike, The Great Game: Afghanistan has made a tour of American theaters for the past four months, most recently this month at the Public Theatre in New York.

This long evening is divided into three parts, with two intermissions. The first part, entitled "Invasions and Independence 1842-1930," deals with British competition with Russia for involvement in Afghanistan for the purposes of protecting India, the jewel in Britain's crown at the time. This part concludes with the abdication of the British-controlled emir in the face of hostile tribal forces, a harbinger of the internal political turmoil and chaos to come.

Enter America

The second part, entitled "Communism, the Mujahideen and the Taliban" (1979-1996), depicts the contest for power and influence over Afghanistan between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, a turbulent period that created severe internal instability.

Part III, "Enduring Freedom" (1996-2010), deals with the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, the attempt of the newly created republic under Karzai to govern in the face of repeated Taliban insurgency, and the tragic consequences of America's escalating involvement.

Sounds dry and didactic? Not at all. The strength of this unique "total immersion" production is that it provides a vividly dramatic and crucial context for understanding Afghanistan. Fortified by a unified set (an empty stage with a map of Afghanistan as its backdrop) and a gifted company of 14 actors playing various roles, each of the 12 plays dramatizes a carefully selected pivotal moment in Afghanistan history or a key social issue. Like pieces of a puzzle, they all fit together to illuminate the tumultuous landscape of this strife-torn country.

"'Why are you here?'

In the opening play (Bugles at the Gates of Jalalabad, by Stephen Jeffreys, set in 1842), an Afghan puts a question to four British soldiers: "What are you doing in Afghanistan"? Four answers are offered: 1) "God's will"; 2) "Killing savages"; 3) "Because of my country"; 4) "Orders." As an after thought, a fifth answer is offered: "Because of a mistake." Over the next 11 plays we watch history repeat itself in different tragic forms.

Then there's the memorable conversation in the second play (Durand's Line, by Ron Hutchinson, set in 1893) between Sir Henry Mortimer Durand and the ruling Afghan emir, concerning Britain's attempt to enforce a new definition of Afghanistan's borders. "In some sense your country is entirely in the wrong place," Sir Henry explains, by way of justifying the arbitrariness of British imperialism. "We're trying to birth a country through the reach of the imagination."

The emir replies: "You're forcing the world into a shape it cannot take. It is not the map which describes the world, but what brings it into being." In the end, the emir submits to British pressure, not before asking Sir Henry why the British can't divide their own country more fairly, giving Scotland and Wales as much land as England.

Najibullah's fate

Map drawing is a repeating metaphor that unites these plays. "Pakistan is a dreamed- up country," says a journalist in David Greig's Miniskirts of Kabul, toward the end of Part II. After the death of the Soviet-backed Afghan president Najibullah— dragged from the UN compound and hanged by the Taliban in 1996— two members of the Taliban whitewash the historic map of Afghanistan that has served as a backdrop for the preceding plays. The rest of Part II and Part III will be played, ominously, against a white void.

Just a few tender, hopeful moments are interspersed between scenes of dark prophecy and violence. In The Night Is Darkest Before the Dawn, by Abi Morgan in Part III, a brother and sister are divided over the issue of women's education. While the men in their village are preoccupied with selling opium, the aunt implores her niece to keep writing, to tell her story and that of her country.

Then the darkness descends once more. In the evening's final play— Canopy of Stars, by Simon Stephens—two British soldiers sit in a trench in present time, surrounded by the poppy fields of Afghanistan, questioning why they are there "“ just as their antecedents did in the play that began The Great Game. The evening ends; the question that began the play remains unanswered.

Two memorable moments

Two moments will remain in my memory forever. During an imaginary interview between a journalist and the specter of President Najibullah in Miniskirts of Kabul, an image of the Spice Girls comes up on TV, and the journalist and her subject break into irrepressible dance. Together they sing the lyrics, so appropriate for the dramatic context:

"Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want
So tell me what you want, what you really really want
If you want my future forget my past
If you wanna get with me better make it fast."

It's a completely unexpected moment— hilarious and heart-warming"“ and you get the sense of what might be possible if only a little humor and humanity could be brought to bear in this tragedy-torn part of the world.

Into the lions' den

A second unforgettable moment occurs in The Lion of Kabul, by Colin Teevan, set in 1998. Two Afghan aid workers have disappeared while distributing rice to the rural population, and the UN director of operations is intent on finding out what has happened to them. She discovers that their murderers are now being held by the Taliban. But the Taliban leader won't recognize her, because a) she's from the UN and b) she's a woman. In this horrifying confrontation at the Kabul Zoo, the Taliban leader, speaking to her through a third party, tells her that if she wants justice, she must take the murderers and deal with them herself, or the Taliban will. Helpless, the UN official stands by while the Taliban guards dangle the two screaming murderers over the lion pit, about to throw them in it.

Those screams and roars will stay with me. So will the sounds of gunshots that begin the evening and the deafening explosions that end it.