The New York Times - Somewhat Recommended
"...Unsurprisingly, the most memorable image in “The Kite Runner,” which opened at the Helen Hayes Theater on Thursday night, is of the kites. They’re miniature, attached to thin poles that several actors wave, white tissue-paper flitting, birdlike, over their heads. The paper crinkles as the kites part the air with a soft swish."
Vulture - Somewhat Recommended
"...There is no shortage of words in the adaptation of the 2003 best seller at the Helen Hayes Theater. Playwright Matthew Spangler has taken large passages from Hosseini’s book, including word-for-word dialogue and lots of first-person narration. But Hosseini’s storytelling excels in the thrill of its incidents and discoveries rather than its prose. So much of the action is spelled out verbatim here that The Kite Runner is more of a vivid recitation than fully realized drama."
New York Theater - Somewhat Recommended
"...Under Giles Croft’s direction, “The Kite Runner” is professionally acted by an appealing cast of 12, all but two of whom are making their Broadway debuts. The design is efficient, as if geared for touring — projections of childlike drawings of city skylines in Kabul and San Francisco; Asian carpets, an intricately decorated curtain that seemed to be in the shape of a kite. A highlight of the production is the music; Salar Nader sits on stage throughout all two and a half hours, playing the tabla, the traditional twin hand drums of Hindustani classical music. Wouldn’t it have been better to have employed all this talent for an original work of theater that had something new and nuanced to say?"
Variety - Recommended
"...Playwright Matthew Spangler’s adaptation of “The Kite Runner,” Khaled Hosseini’s bestselling 2005 novel about the friendship of two boys living parallel lives in Afghanistan, is a heartbreaker – but so uplifting, it’s worth the pain."
New York Post - Recommended
"...Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 tearjerker novel “The Kite Runner” has no shortage of terrible traumas: deaths, beatings, a rape, the disastrous takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. To say the very least, it’s a lot."
amNY - Somewhat Recommended
"...From what I gather, Matthew Spangler’s adaptation is extremely faithful to the novel – so much so that the play often feels like an audiobook reading of the novel that is clumsily supplemented by multi-character scenes and digital projections."
Chicago Tribune - Somewhat Recommended
"...For a Broadway show, the production values are as underwhelming as the overtly presentational direction from by Giles Croft. There is some rich kite imagery, for sure, and live music from the percussionist Salar Nader (he plays the tabla). But even those sounds are sometimes drowned out by superfluous recorded music. Everything is too slow, too ponderous and, in the case of all of the actors playing multiple roles, their confusing trajectories were insufficiently thought out by the director."
Deadline - Recommended
"...Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 bestselling novel The Kite Runner is the sort of compelling, epic morality tale that spans eras and cultures, depicts friendship and betrayal, loyalty and cowardice, acts of kindness and demonstrations of unspeakable cruelty. With its eye on an all-but-guaranteed redemption, The Kite Runner has an unmistakable allure – equal parts beach read and Serious Literature – that proved irresistible to Hollywood and, now, Broadway."
TheaterMania - Somewhat Recommended
"...I'm sort of baffled by the stage adaptation of The Kite Runner at the Helen Hayes Theatre. Not that it exists; the dramatic bones within Khaled Hosseini's beloved and bestselling novel are strong and worthy. But Matthew Spangler's script is just so clumsy, and Giles Croft's production (which originated at the Nottingham Playhouse and Liverpool Everyman in England in 2013 before moving to the West End years later) is just so bland, that I couldn't help but wonder why this is the theatricalized version of the material that a group of more than two-dozen producers chose to take to Broadway."
TheaterScene.net - Highly Recommended
"...The Kite Runner, the beloved novel by Khaled Hosseini published in 2003, also turned into an acclaimed 2008 film, has been adapted for the stage by college professor Matthew Spangler and is now at Broadway’s Hayes Theater in a production by Giles Croft, former artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse where he first staged the play in 2017. While the story covering 28 years of Afghan history remains compelling and involving, the play version has made several poor choices. Spangler uses a narrator just like the book but the first act stage version tells the story rather than dramatizes it. This is corrected in the second half which then tries to portray a great deal of events of the novel in the somewhat rushed second act."
NY Theatre Guide - Recommended
"...In The Kite Runner, kite flying factors in two pivotal scenes. In the first, the actors come out waving gauzy white fabric hanging from springy wire rods, giving the illusion of kites flying in the air. At my performance, one of the kites failed to sufficiently lift off above the actor's head. It hovered slightly, then dipped toward the ground. The actor valiantly tried to pull it up, but the kite refused to take flight, seemingly comfortable bobbing along at shoulder height. This can be a metaphor for the play, which tries to soar beyond its origins as a novel, but remains steadfastly bound by its source material."
Stage Buddy - Somewhat Recommended
"...Over 7 million copies of the book were sold in the US and made its rounds in book clubs. That would suggest a great Broadway ticket potential. So the new show The Kite Runner at The Hayes Theater was in a good position to be a hit. Yet the show is less than satisfying."
Theater Pizzazz - Recommended
"...The Kite Runner is an incident-packed story of what happens in the life a boy from Kabul named Amir (Amir Arison, fine) who, as an adult, narrates the events, shifting between his childhood and grown-up personas. His widowed father, Baba (Faran Tahir, commanding), is a wealthy, strong-willed Pashtun merchant with a faithful Hazara servant of forty years, Ali (Evan Zes, satisfactory). Ali's son, Hassan (Erik Sirakian, effective), has been brought up alongside Amir, so closely they might as well be brothers."
StageZine - Highly Recommended
"...With the exception of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, there are very few memory plays that come to mind. Better yet, a powerful and effective memory play that grabs you from the first scene and engulfs you with so many emotions and feelings and tugs at you way after the play is over—that being the ultimate reward in a theatrical experience—which The Kite Runner does so beautifully."
Daily Beast - Somewhat Recommended
"...Ultimately, and absolutely in line with the cowboy movies Amir loves, a poetic vengeance is visited upon Assef. Quite besides its many thematic deficiencies, this scene, as with many of the key scenes in The Kite Runner, feels rickety and ill-thought-out. Melodramatic twist piles upon melodramatic twist, until Amir says and does something heroic in regards to Sohrab. However, even this moment falls flat, given who his words are said to and how late it comes, and how it is staged. “There is a way to be good again,” we hear again—but Amir seems a 95 percent lacking ambassador of it."
The Observer - Not Recommended
"...Adapting novels for the stage is a noble endeavor; a healthy culture should be eager to translate its new (or classic) narratives into other media. I’ve seen revelatory theatrical versions of Dostoyevsky’s Demons (twice), Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (verbatim in the marathon masterpiece by Elevator Repair Service) and others—many at New YorkTheatre Workshop. While popular fiction generally gravitates to movies or streaming series, there is an argument to be made for transforming novels into live performance. The Kite Runner, long on talking and short on showing, does not make that argument very strongly."
Broadway News - Not Recommended
"...“The Kite Runner” is a book in play’s clothing. In an attempt to reconnect audiences with a story cherished by millions, the play’s creative team has torched any beauty there was to admire in the first place. What the novel slowly reveals through Amir’s reflective point of view, the play just speaks, abandoning all finesse. Like most high school love affairs, Broadway’s “Kite Runner” may be best off forgotten."
Theatrely - Somewhat Recommended
"...The Kite Runner, adapted from Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling novel from 2003, finds itself in the latter camp (though, with not a single Arab-sounding name in its creative credits, it’s not exactly authentically produced, either). But though the book starts out decently strong, it ends up feeling like 30 Rock’s Precious parody, Hard to Watch: Based on the Book 'Stone Cold Bummer' by Manipulate. Whether Hosseini’s fault — I’ve not read his book — or that of playwright Matthew Spangler, I cannot say, but the results are an unwelcome throwback to the Bush era’s inelegant emotional manipulation."
New York Stage Review - Recommended
"...Matthew Spangler’s absorbing adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, which just opened on Broadway, chooses the latter—and, let’s be honest, more commercially viable—approach. Why mess with a beloved No. 1 New York Times best seller that’s sold millions upon millions of copies worldwide?"
Cultural Daily - Highly Recommended
"...Novels don’t always work well on stage, especially when there’s a first-person narrator. Plays rely on action rather than narration (“Show, don’t tell” is the rule of thumb) and contained plots over sprawling stories. Fortunately, Matthew Spangler’s adaptation of The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 best-seller about a young man’s harrowing experiences of growing up in Afghanistan and immigrating to the US after the Russian invasion, is sharply focused, conveying an epic and engaging plot without wandering or diffusing. Now at the Helen Hayes Theatre for a limited run after two seasons in London’s West End, Kite runs, soars and introduces American audiences to a culture rarely, if ever, seen on Broadway."
