‘Selling Kabul’ Review: Found in Translation
Selling Kabul (★★★★☆) at Signature Theatre might have been able to hear the actors’ hearts racing.The Afghanistan-set drama by Sylvia Khoury, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2022, draws us fully inside the humble, endangered lives of Taroon (Mazin Azar), a translator desperately awaiting a visa to flee Kabul, and his sister Afiya (Awesta Zarif). Afiya, along with husband Jawid (Yousof Sultani), risks freedom and safety by hiding Taroon from the Taliban, and from the couple’s nosy neighbor, Leyla (Neagheen Homaifar).Ghaheri’s production draws us close inside the characters’ dire reality, and Afiya and Jawid’s cozy apartment, rendered in textured, naturalistic detail by Tony Cisek.Images on the living room television of former Afghan president Hamid Karzai — with Obama, with Putin — usher in the atmosphere of 2013 and America’s longest war, reinforced by the heap of Army fatigues piled in a corner.