BLOOD AND GIFTS looks at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan through the eyes of an American operative who befriends a local warlord (photo by T. Charles Erickson)
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through January 8, $85
212-362-7600
www.lct.org
Sociopolitical playwright J. T. Rogers transported audiences to Rome in Madagascar and Rwanda in The Overwhelming, telling intimate stories of Americans abroad. In his latest work, the Lincoln Center commission Blood and Gifts, the Brooklyn-based writer examines the Soviet war in Afghanistan as seen through the eyes of CIA operative James Warnock (a strong, confident Jeremy Davidson). With his wife back in the States, Warnock heads to Islamabad as the new station chief, ready to offer cold, hard cash to Colonel Afridi (Gabriel Ruiz), a Pakistani military intelligence chief seeking to help Afghan freedom fighters, in particular the extremely dangerous and unpredictable Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Warnock joins with cynical British MI6 lifer Simon Craig (an appropriately twitchy and nervous Jefferson Mays), while their counterpart is the sly Dmitri Gromov (a very funny Michael Aronov), a Soviet agent trying to keep tabs on the American, since the United States has made it very clear that it is not getting involved in the conflict. Warnock quickly develops a close relationship with mujahideen warlord Abdullah Khan (Bernard White) and his right-hand man, Saeed (Pej Vahdat), eventually bringing them to Washington to attempt to pry more funding out of Senator Jefferson Birch (Robert Hogan) and the rest of Congress. With the cold war coming to an end, politics and family collide head-on, with the main characters taking a painful look at their own personal lives, measuring their public responsibility against their private needs as they contemplate the sacrifices they’ve made in the name of country.
Spies from America, England, and the Soviet Union are both friends and enemies in J. T. Rogers’s political thriller (photo by T. Charles Erickson)
Blood and Gifts is a powerful drama about men playing war games, about fathers and sons, about superpowers invading seemingly vulnerable yet ultimately impenetrable foreign nations. Although it takes place between 1981 and 1991, it is as much about today (Iraq, Afghanistan) and tomorrow (Iran?) as it is about yesterday (Vietnam, Korea). Bartlett Sher directs with a swift hand, moving things quickly on Michael Yeargan’s small, sparse set, which consists of a tiled floor flanked on three sides by benches on which some of the actors sit while waiting for their next scene to come up, watching the action along with the audience. Davidson plays Warnock with a square-jawed determination, heading a solid cast that also includes a humorous turn by John Procaccino as blustery CIA head Walter Barnes. Beginning life as a one-act at the Tricycle Theatre’s “The Great Game: Afghanistan” series before making its full-length debut at London’s National Theatre, Blood and Gifts is a compelling spy thriller that takes audiences behind the scenes of the inner workings of the business of war and the high cost paid by the men and women on the sidelines, as well as those right in the middle of the action.