FRINGE REVIEW: “Afghanistan is Not Funny”

Afghanistan is Not Funny – Venue 14: Gilded Balloon Teviot – Dining Room – 4pm

I CAN’T think of any occasion that, in this case, the sole actor of a production has left the stage at the end of a performance as the lights dim and there is a total silence in the auditorium.  Not a silence of discontent or disapproval, but a silence of introspection. This says a huge amount about this wonderful and powerful production.

Henry Naylor, the talented playwright, narrates his trip to Afghanistan in 2002 to research a satire he wanted to produce at a future Fringe. He is accompanied on his trip by a hardened war photographer, Sam Maynard. The narration is fast and exciting against a background of photographs taken by Maynard. On his trip he encountered the amusing re-enactment of the taking of Kabul by some enthusiastic Mujahedeen soldiers leering from a tank to a sculpture of, most probable, still live missiles.  Less amusing is a collection of prosthetic limbs, primitive in their construction and no doubt painful to wear, and a photograph of a blown-up hole designed to catch Westerners in its death explosion. Combining dark humour with brutal reality is a trademark of Naylor’s productions and it works very well.

The result of the trip to Afghanistan was Naylor’s successful 2003 production of Finding Bin Laden. What makes Afghanistan is Not Funny such a terrific story is that, after the success of Finding Bin Laden, there was a possible lucrative film deal. After much re-writing, the film never materialised, leaving Naylor much deflated.  It is the words of Maynard that crystallise what the trip was about; it wasn’t the successful Fringe production or the film, it was one photographic image, which was the gift to Naylor and the audience.

The narrator, Naylor, asks many questions, not least what is the entertainment industry doing sanitising the hell of this war or any other war?  In war, who is telling what to whom and why?  Who is telling the story of the Afghans? Sadly, no-one is it seems.

Naylor pulls off a complicated and difficult subject with great skill. Without telling you what the last image is that resulted in the introspective silence, all I will tell you is at the end of Naylor’s mesmerising narration you, like him, will be under no illusion as to what is important.

FOUR STARS

Get the full details about the show here.

Plus, read more reviews on Scottish Field’s Fringe pages.