AFGHAN EPIC A THEATRICAL FEAST.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

NOT MANY PLAYWRIGHTS could follow up an era-defining play like ``Angels in America.'' Not many could even write ``Angels in America.'' Very few would even touch the subjects that Tony Kushner tackles.

For that matter, very few people who earn their living writing plays could successfully incorporate hat fabric, Sinatra, pharmacology and Afghan history into the same dizzy, spinning monologue. That Kushner requires nearly an hour to pull off that single remarkable speech that opens his ``Homebody/Kabul'' is a rare gift and a potential audience alienator. By the time the Homebody monologue reaches its conclusion, we're deep in the realm of world history, politics and the wonders of travel. And the play isn't even a third complete.

Amid a veritable blaring of trumpets signaling its arrival, Kushner's ``Homebody/Kabul'' has finally arrived at the Mark Taper Forum. It's here a year after we were supposed to get it and two years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks had theater writers around the world calling Kushner a seer. (In the afterword to the play's published version, Kushner says it's been suggested that he adopt the name Eara Lee Prescient as a drag moniker.)

``Homebody/Kabul'' is, like so much of Kushner's work, alternately brilliant and unwieldy - an intellectual five-course banquet. The play is slightly better-focused than in its earlier published version (seen by this critic at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in May 2002). One character has been eliminated, another is given more time to display humanity instead of the intense bitterness that she is so often accused of. There are still instances - fewer, happily - where it feels that Kushner's characters are caught on a message-imparting treadmill: You will take my point.

It's still an impressive piece of work. Directing the play for the second time, Frank Galati serves up a production that is as uncompromising as the material. Audiences should emerge physically and mentally exhausted.

Yes, it's only the opening speech, but Linda Emond's Homebody monologue is as convincing an argument for leaving a half-hour early to get to the Taper as any traffic report. (Curtain's at 7:30, folks, and there's no late seating!) A matron sits in her comfortable parlor reading an outdated Afghanistan guidebook, recounting an encounter both real and imagined with an Afghani merchant, and dreaming of the faraway lands that she has no plans to ever visit (or does she?).

Emond's Homebody is erudite yet dithering, wistful, sad and strangely hopeful. Her speech concluded, the Homebody dons her coat, turns out the light and leaves as set designer James Schuette's backdrop parts, bringing us to the towering, bombed-out walls of Kabul where the Homebody is reported murdered. Her reeling husband and daughter have come to find her. The year is 1998, the Taliban rules, and American bombs haven't yet begun to fall.

``Homebody/Kabul's'' Kabul section is devoted primarily to Priscilla Ceiling (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal), whose search for her mother's body turns up a certain self-understanding that perhaps she didn't possess before. Priscilla is lost in every sense of the word. She's in a strange land looking for the parent she alienated. In this play, it's the women who make the journeys. Priscilla takes dangerously to the streets while her father Milton (Reed Birney) and British liaison Quango Twisleton (Bill Camp) get drunk and shoot up in the hotel room.

Gyllenhaal makes Priscilla not quite the walking exposed nerve that everybody else makes her out to be. Damaged and flawed the character certainly is, but not entirely without hope. In Gyllenhaal's hands, the character's shoulders are frequently up around her ears, her posture is terrible, and she frequently stands with one foot curled onto an ankle. Priscilla is tightly wound. That will change.

Her search brings her to another woman, a former librarian named Mahala (Rita Wolf) living under Taliban oppression, whose presence in ``Homebody/Kabul'' has always been thematically problematic. The Ceilings are asked to take her to London and leave the Homebody - her body and her memory - behind.

``Homebody/Kabul'' is set before the 1998 bombings of the terrorist training camps in Khost. Dangerous and incendiary as the country may be, Afghanistan remains - in Kushner's view - the cradle of civilization. The fascination comes through: in Emond's monologue, in Gyllenhaal's contemplation of the night sky. ``I love love love love the world!'' the Homebody exults.

So, clearly, does the author. His amazing play reflects the sentiment.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

HOMEBODY/KABUL - Three and one half stars

Where: Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; through Nov. 9.

Tickets: $33 to $47. Call [phone].

In a nutshell: History, politics and character turmoil as only an epic playwright like Tony Kushner can deliver it.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dariush Kashani, center, and Firdous Bamji star in Tony Kushner's ``Homebody/Kabul'' at the Mark Taper Forum.