Warning: Overdone tearjerker ahead...there's buckets of pathos in this stage version of The Kite Runner, says QUENTIN LETTS 

• e-mail

The Kite Runner

Rating:

Ben Turner, who used to play one of the nurses in TV's Casualty, takes the lead in a slightly gamey stage adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's best-selling Afghan tear-jerker The Kite Runner.

This 2003 novel helped Westerners to a better understanding of Afghanistan just as George W. Bush was taking the U.S. ever deeper into war there.

It tells of a self-tormenting teenager, Amir, who with his father flees Kabul after the 1979 Soviet occupation. Some two decades later Amir returns to Taliban-run Afghanistan to confront his ghosts.

It tells of a self-tormenting teenager, Amir, who with his father flees Kabul after the 1979 Soviet occupation

Misfortune abounds. This show would certainly suit those who like stage characters to be subjected to everything life can possibly throw at them.

Civil war, sociopathic gay rape, parental neglect, suicidal tendencies, cultural self-repression, cancer, tribal and caste divisions and more, we've got it.

A cheery night out, it ain't.

At times you can almost hear the gears changing as the plot prepares for another assault on your tear ducts.

Mr Turner plays Amir both in adolescence and adulthood, no visual effort being made to differentiate the two.

Amir also serves as narrator as the story roams from the 1970s to the 21st century.

This production, a joint venture between Nottingham Playhouse and Liverpool Everyman, has a multi-tasking cast who cover the territory not only in Afghanistan but also San Francisco, where Amir and his dad Baba (Emilio Doorgasingh) make their new life.

At times you can almost hear the gears changing as the plot prepares for another assault on your tear ducts

Barney George's design has a back-wall featuring some fence pallisades of a Kabul compound which double up as the San Francisco skyline.

As the audience assembles, a cross-legged tabla player pats out some musical accompaniment, which might make disrespectful souls think of a curry house.

This is one of several moments where the show teeters on the brink of self-parody.

In childhood, Amir's best friend is the slightly younger Hassan (well played by Andrei Costin). The two boys seem inseparable until Hassan is cornered by a bully. Amir, who has a cowardly streak, fails to defend his little friend.

Slosh-slosh go buckets of pathos as Amir scolds himself, wringing his guts at his secret cowardice.

That failure to look after Hassan drives the entire story — perhaps more than seems justified.

Amir comes across as a bit of an old woman, really. Some of the acting is a little patchy (though not from Mr Turner, who does fine). I am not sure I once believed I was actually in Kabul.

Nicholas Karimi is miscast as the nasty bully. When his character reappears 22 years later, he is wearing not only a pair of sunglasses, but also a spectacularly bad beard.

Amir comes across as a bit of an old woman, really. Some of the acting is a little patchy

That face fungus is a real corker, a collector's item for connoisseurs of dodgy stage make-up.

It really needs a programme mention all of its own.

If melodramatic sagas are your bag, you may well enjoy this show, despite a few moments of frightful corn in Matthew Spangler's script.

The sweep of the story gives us a sense of Afghanistan's cyclical woes, the loneliness of exile, the pride of cultural self-esteem.

We also eventually see Amir starting to come to terms with himself.

About time, too.

Slosh-slosh go buckets of pathos as Amir scolds himself, wringing his guts at his secret cowardice