Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America, Kuwait
Closed 1h 30m
Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America, Kuwait
62

Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America, Kuwait NYC Reviews and Tickets

62%
(5 Ratings)
Positive
80%
Mixed
0%
Negative
20%
Members say
Great acting, Great singing, Slow, Profound, Absorbing

About the Show

Rattlestick Theatre presents a play about two soldiers who wait for battle, but there are no enemies left to fight and no one, especially those in charge, seems to know who has won.

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Show-Score Member Reviews (5)

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60 Reviews | 34 Followers
81
Thought-provoking, Original, Intelligent, Great staging, Great acting

See it if You want your mind opened.

Don't see it if You're hypersensitive and easily upset.

541 Reviews | 489 Followers
70
Great acting, Slow, Intense, Challenging, Relevant

See it if you want an exploration of the effects of war on soldiers in a world where nothing really makes any sense anymore.

Don't see it if you like crystal-clear storytelling.

536 Reviews | 279 Followers
20
Boring, Unclear, Disappointing, Excruciating, Slow

See it if you want to have a truly boring evening in the theatre. The playwright and director are the same person—trouble ahead!!

Don't see it if you're smart.

3 Reviews | 2 Followers
100
Absorbing, Funny, Great acting, Great singing, Profound

See it if You would like to see the progression of a character who is broken, yet finds herself in the end.

Don't see it if You don't like movie to stage adaptations.

3 Reviews | 2 Followers
71
Great singing, Great acting, Overrated

See it if You liked the movie.

Don't see it if You did not like the movie.

Critic Reviews (16)

The New York Times
June 10th, 2015

"What Mr. Talbott expects us to derive from his play remains opaque. He is hardly the first to depict the difficult life of the soldier and its punishing psychic toll. Despite the fine acting, 'Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America, Kuwait' succeeds mostly in making us share the mind-addling frustration of its characters, and maybe wondering how Zimbabwe fits into this particular vision of the hazards of war."
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Time Out New York
June 9th, 2015

"You can feel the heat and the panic in Daniel Talbott's hallucinatory production, which has the rhythm and texture of a nightmare. Talbott breaks his story into vignettes to evoke time passing and water supply dwindling, punctuated by John Zalewski's electric-misfire sound design. Like the grains of sand on the floor of the stage that audience members must walk through to get to their seats, this one will stick with you for a while."
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New York Daily News
June 9th, 2015

"At best, the acting is uniformly strong and the script packs punches with its unsettling imagery...In the end, the play is both obvious and unclear. It hits you over the head and leaves you scratching it."
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New York Post
June 9th, 2015

"While the atmosphere is there, the play itself doesn’t rise to that level — Daniel Talbott was better at directing his own show than at writing it...The play is too heavy-handed in its use of fantasy scenes and some details don’t track...But the overall vibe is convincingly post-apocalyptic. And the actors are all very good."
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Theatermania
June 9th, 2015

Talbott seems far less interested in the specific geopolitics of the countries he invokes as he is in depicting the horrors to which they might lead. While certainly well-intentioned, it results in a theatrical experience that is both dismal and unenlightening...While only 90 minutes long, 'Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America, Kuwait' feels as tedious as a forced march through the Sahara."
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Lighting & Sound America
June 10th, 2015

"Unfortunately, Talbott has nothing pertinent to say...The title is the biggest tell: Each of the four countries has, in its own way, been affected by violent warfare, but the devil is always, always in the details. Lumping them together is an easy way of seeming to make an important statement without really doing so. In 'Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America, Kuwait', Talbott wants us to feel very, very guilty. It would be better if he tried to make us think."
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TheaterScene.net
June 10th, 2015

"Not specifying the locale of the action appears to be an attempt to achieve a metaphorical dimension. It’s really just a pretentious mishmash of battlefield clichés...Irritating though watchable, 'Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America, Kuwait,' by the time of its conclusion feels like an academic theatrical exercise of little consequence."
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CurtainUp
June 5th, 2015

"Indeed, there's plenty of ambiguity regarding what here is real and what is fantasy, what can be believed and what shouldn't be. It's possible for different viewers to come away with varying ideas of what they've seen, and that's not a bad thing. Neither aggressively emotional nor prescriptively moral, 'Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America, Kuwait' presents a measured, thought-provoking, and gripping vision of where today's constant state of war might lead us."
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Trailer

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