Marathon training

HISTORY may repeat itself, but we are rarely the wiser for it. And Afghanistan, that complicated, hapless place, has long been a victim of its geography. These are among the lessons of “The Great Game: Afghanistan”, a marathon of a dozen plays about the history of Western involvement in the country. Nicolas Kent, the artistic director of the Tricycle Theatre in London, commissioned these works from different writers at a time when he felt the public had stopped caring about Afghanistan. After a successful first run in London in 2009 “The Great Game” returned to Washington, DC, in mid-February at the behest of the Pentagon. Officials at the Defence Department thought it would be a good primer on Afghanistan for serving soldiers, veterans and politicians.

The plays are impressive for the way they convey the complexity of the country's past without wagging fingers. Presented chronologically in a nearly eight-hour trilogy, the cycle begins in Jalalabad in 1842, during the British and Indian army's bloody retreat from Kabul (“Bugles at the Gates of Jalalabad” by Stephen Jeffreys), and continues up till 2010, as a British soldier struggles to adjust to life at home after his time in Helmand (“Canopy of Stars” by Simon Stephens). The title, “The Great Game”, an expression popularised by Rudyard Kipling, is a reference to the way the British and Russian empires jockeyed for position in the region in the 19th century.