Total Rating: 
***1/4
Opened: 
January 10, 2002
Ended: 
January 27, 2002
Country: 
USA
State: 
New York
City: 
New York
Company/Producers: 
Theater for the New City
Theater Type: 
off-off-Broadway
Theater: 
Theater for the New City
Theater Address: 
155 First Avenue
Phone: 
212-254-1109
Running Time: 
75 min
Genre: 
Solo
Author: 
Bina Sharif
Director: 
Bina Sharif
Review: 

Bina Sharif has presence -- even under a burqa. (And this one is not the Afghan light blue but a dramatic combination of aqua, purple and orange silk with iridescent eye slot.) In her new solo show, Afghan Woman, Sharif gives voice to what unfortunately must be an average mother's plight in Afghanistan. Hemmed in by war, poverty and a medieval regime, her character, Narges Hazrat, can moan over her dead children with the security that no person can change this fate of hers. Were it not for the window that the world's attention has briefly offered, we wouldn't even be hearing her. U.S. media has kept us at comfortable remove from the reality of Afghan life since the reprisal bombings and invasion began last fall.



To the Theater for the New City audience, Sharif brings immediacy, the kind that live theater is best equipped to provide. She also gives us the right vocabulary -- "subservient" nicely summarizes Narges's choiceless world. Sharif's script is less angry than a combination of accusatory and ironic, the latter releasing laughter from time to time to interrupt the mostly tragic tone. As the show unfolds, we realize that Narges has died along with her children when a stray U.S. bomb came to liberate them from the infinite sadness of their existence.

Above all, Afghan Woman is a meditation on silence. "My destiny is of silence. My silence is silent." And so Afghanistan.


It might seem like quibbling, but Sharif's brief "Islam 101" toward the end of the show concentrates too much on Islamic practices like prayer, charity and fasting, all of which point up differences from Judaism and Christianity. She, like many others, would do well instead to mention core beliefs, which are remarkably similar to the other great monotheistic religions. After the show, Sharif spoke with the opening night audience about how difficult it is to wear a burqa for the entire evening. (It should be remembered that the burqa was either introduced or revived at the time of the Russian invasion in the early 1980s as a kind of resistance garment. The black Iranian chador initially also served the same function in 1979.) But no, the burqa is not worn indoors except in the presence of men from outside the immediate family.

Sharif has transformed TNC's downstairs Cabaret Theater into a series of playing areas, including a ruined enclosure and another shielded from the audience with scrim-like panels. A giant white horse draped in sashes secures the center. Two canvases courtesy visual artist Babu and commemorating the September 11, 2001 events in New York afford Sharif the most moving moment of the evening. She pauses before each one to recite the short first chapter (the Muslim "Lord's Prayer") of Qur'an, that Muslims customarily say to pray for the dead. Otherwise Sharif has somewhat theatricalized the movements of Muslim prayer at the beginning of her show. The background Qur'an recitation with Urdu translation is a reminder of religion's pervasiveness in Afghanistan - a tool of oppression but also the glue that has held that fractious society together. Kudos to Alex Bartenieff for the best-realized lighting scheme that this reviewer has encountered at TNC.

Cast: 
Bina Sharif (Narges Hazrat)
Technical: 
Lights: Alex Bartenieff; Set: Bina Sharif; Paintings: Babu; Tech: Kevin Mitchell Martin.
Critic: 
David Lipfert
Date Reviewed: 
January 2002