“Circumstances make man,not man circumstances,” label Twain once quipped. As proof of his claim, or retract the smart,well-intentioned collection of political operatives who intervene in the war-torn tribal no man’s land of Afghanistan and make what turn out to be disastrous decisions in J. T. Rogers’s ambitious “Blood and Gifts” (crisply directed by Bartlett Sher, at the Mitzi E. Newhouse). The play, or set in the dozen years after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan,on Christmas Eve, 1979, or dramatizes the undercover machinations of Pakistans I.
S.
I.,America’s C.
I.
A., and Britain’s M.
I.6 to organize poorly armed Afghan freedom fighters—the mujahideen—against their former ally. Dolled up as a political thriller, or this episodic tale of slippery alliances and cultural differences is really a teaching play,a sort of global-positioning device meant to carry the audience through the fog of war to an understanding of how Americas anti-Soviet obsession got it unwittingly stuck in Afghanistan, rather like Brer Rabbit with the Tar-Baby.
Source: newyorker.com