When The Tricycle’s mammoth programme
The
Great Game: Afghanistan returned this summer (prior to an
American tour which has just begun in Washington) it lacked one of its
original components, as the National Theatre had secured J T Rogers’
play about American involvement in the anti-Soviet Afghan insurgency of
the 1980s. That piece can now be seen in expanded form; truth to tell,
Rogers’ one-act version always seemed to be trying to fit a quart into
a pint pot.
In some ways, the play verges on the stereotypical. The viewpoint
character is the noble, principled American Jim Warnock who, as CIA
station head in Pakistan, tries to keep things square between the
Pakistani ISI who are channelling funding and weapons to the
mujahideen, his British counterpart, the fighters themselves and his
political and intelligence masters, and above all between his own
principles, his more personal concerns and Realpolitik. The Brit, in
turn, is out of one of Graham Greene’s less extreme stories:
knowledgeable, indeed sometimes with a better perspective than Jim, but
liable to say the wrong thing especially in the company of Irish
whiskey. Some of the mujahideen, whilst deploring foreign interference,
ask Jim about the lyrics to “Hotel California” or request tapes by
Duran Duran and Tina Turner. Even the production’s own score by Marc
Teitler has a sound to remind one of the extent to which John Barry
seemed to have written the soundtrack to the entire Cold War.
But this is as good a path through the subject as any. Rogers’s
criticisms are even-handed, and ultimately extend even to Jim himself.
If your enemy’s enemy is your friend, but everyone is everyone else’s
enemy, where does that leave you and your own trustworthiness? Howard
Davies’ production is elegantly staged on a modular Ultz set, with
Lloyd Owen leading an 18-strong cast in a finely judged performance as
Jim: someone with whom we can sympathise yet stop short of overlooking
or forgiving his errors. This is the kind of steady-gazing, publicly
engaged play that David Hare used to write before he became too
conscious of his own status as a commentator. It ends in 1989, after
the Soviet withdrawal but without an exit strategy in sight... or, as
The Eagles put it, you can check out any time you like, but you can
never leave.