A Thousand Splendid Suns European Premiere: Cast Announcement
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini’s spiritual sequel to The Kite Runner will have its European première at Birmingham Repertory Theatre from 2 – 18 May before playing at partner venues Northern Stage (30 May – 15 June) and Nuffield Southampton Theatres (25 June – 6 July). The show will also tour to Hackney Empire (22 -25 May).
The cast features Sujaya Dasgupta (Death of a Salesman/Royal & Derngate, Press/BBC), Amina Zia (Tartuffe/RSC), Pal Aron (Behind the Beautiful Forevers/National Theatre, Stella/ Sky One), Waleed Akhtar (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen / Lasse Hallström, What Shadows / Birmingham Repertory Theatre and The Kite Runner / Nottingham Playhouse & Liverpool Everyman), alongside Munir Khairdin (Whitechapel / ITV), Naveed Khan; Mollie Lambert (The White Devil / Shakespeare’s Globe), Shala Nyx (Miss Prue / Bristol Old Vic) and Liza Zahra (The Kite Runner / Wyndham’s).
Khaled Hosseini’s international best-selling novel is the powerful story of three generations of women discovering strength in unity and finding hope in the unlikeliest of places. Set in 1992 in an Afghanistan ravaged by war, an orphaned Laila is left alone in an increasingly threatening world. Her older neighbour Rasheed is quick to open his home and takes Laila as his second wife. Rasheed’s first wife Mariam has no choice but to accept her younger, and now pregnant, rival. As the Taliban take over, life for all of them becomes a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, and the two women find themselves unlikely allies. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, love grows and sustains the human spirit even during the hardest of times.
Khaled Hosseini’s book has been adapted by Ursula Rani Sarma and will be directed by Artistic Director, Roxana Silbert, her last as Artistic Director of Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Set and costume designs are by Ana Inés Jabares-Pita, lighting design by Simon Bond, composition by Mahmood Kamen, sound design and co-composition by Dave Price.
Khaled Hosseini is one of the most widely read and beloved novelists in the world, with over 38 million copies of his books sold in more than seventy countries. The Kite Runner was a major film and was a Book of the Decade, chosen by The Times, Daily Telegraph and Guardian. Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, Hosseini is currently a Goodwill Envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN Refugee Agency and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation which provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.
