Afghani women suffer in ‘Suns’
Adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling novel gets its world premiere at ACT
A ghostly moon rises gently over a bruised purple sky, illuminating the barren mountains below in “A Thousand Splendid Suns.”
Bay Area author Khaled Hosseini first captured our imaginations with “The Kite Runner.” Then he returned to the war-ravaged streets of Kabul in his second novel, “Suns,” a big-hearted narrative fueled by the secrets and scars of life in Afghanistan.
Adapted for the stage by Ursula Rani Sarma and sensitively directed by Carey Perloff, this unwieldy yet powerful drama makes its world premiere through Feb. 26 at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater. “Suns” may not burn with the heat and light needed to make this piece truly radiant, but it’s a moving and revealing look at a culture more like our own than we may care to admit.
Shot through with haunting tableaux and shattering emotional climaxes, “Suns” can feel unsubtle in the way it distills the novel down to two hours and 40 minutes on stage. But there’s no escaping the relentless ache and beauty of the story and no shaking it’s shattering ending. After a plodding first act that feels static because of so much exposition, the narrative unfurls with inescapable emotional force in Act Two.
Melodrama and history combine as two women of substance cope with the brutalities of fate in this epic saga. Free-spirited Laila (Nadine Adapted by Ursula Rani Sarma from the novel by Khaled Hosseini, presented by American Conservatory Theater Through: Feb. 26 Where: Geary Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes, one intermission Tickets: $25-$125; 415-7492228, www.act-sf.org Malouf) loses her family to an attack on the city. She is 15, lost and alone, coerced into marrying a brutal and cruel man, Rasheed (Haysam Kadri). He pulls her out of the rubble of her lost home and traps her in the cage of a vicious marriage. She seeks comfort in a bond with his first wife, Mariam (Kate Rigg), who has suffered a life of unremitting torment, from the stigma of her illegitimate birth to the sting of being replaced by a younger wife.
The two women become unlikely allies in the face of a hostile fate. They suffer beatings, starvation and the constant threat of death. Mariam is haunted by the ghost of her mother (Denmo Ibrahim), who shambles through the story like a zombie. Laila’s daughter Aziza (Nikita Tewani) is a bright little girl who learns too early to hold her tongue and bow her head, or else.
Ken Macdonald’s gorgeous, intricate and evershifting set design captures the agony of it all in a vast blood-smeared canvas, a symbolic representation of a surgery conducted without anesthesia.
Women are ground into the dust in this world, a fact that is key to the gravity of the story. So many of the male characters are villainous here that it’s quite a relief when there are a few redemptive moments, often delicately etched by Barzin Akhavan in his roles as a teacher and a father who does not long to tear down every women he meets.
Mariam’s mother warns her of the injustice to come: “Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger will always finds a woman. Always.”
The flashbacks here often undermine the pace, major plot twists can feel tacked on, and some of the violence feels awkward, but this production never backs off the horror at the heart of the story. Malouf and Rigg dig into the deep mines of grief enveloping their characters as the story edges towards a shattering sacrifice that closes the play on a crescendo of loss.
Framed by David Coulter’s haunting and delicate score, which he plays live on several instruments, “Suns” musters the cathartic release of an epic tragedy tinged ever so slightly with hope. By the time the sun is setting on the characters, it’s hard to beat back the tears that prick at your eyes.