In this play about a freelance journalist who has survived a kidnapping by the Taliban in Afghanistan, David Zax, a former freelance journalist making his Off-Broadway playwriting debut, uses this shockingly common practice by the Taliban as background for a family drama that attempts to address some of the same moral issues that Arthur Miller explored in his 1947 Broadway play “All My Sons.”   But  “Aftermath,”  opening tonight at A.R.T./NY, is too flawed a play for the issues to hit home anywhere near as effectively.

It is September, 2011, and Joshua (Danny Kornfeld) has spent the last six weeks in his parents’ home in the affluent Kalorama neighborhood in Washington D.C., recovering from his ordeal.  Concerned about a possible trigger to “re-traumatization,” his  mother Linda (Jill Stern) is surprised and concerned that Josh has invited over Mina (Awesta Zarif), an Afghanistan-born British journalist whom he met in Kabul and who is now in Washington temporarily for work. In bits and pieces, we learn that Josh was kidnapped while deliberately venturing way beyond the relative safety of Kabul into a dangerous region; that Mina’s cousin, who was acting as Josh’s interpreter, was killed; and that Josh  was able to escape. What the play eventually reveals is that that’s not the whole story.

The central conflict in “Aftermath” turns out to be between Josh and his father Allan (Steven Skybell.) Josh wants to return as soon as possible to Afghanistan, to continue to report stories “that make a difference.”  Allan wants him to stay home. “After what we went through? Now is a time to think about family, not Afghan villagers.”

“Why do these people matter less?”
“Than your mother and father?!”

Underlying the conflict is Josh’s disapproval of his father for having given up his youthful ideals to make money as a lobbyist. He accuses Allan of being selfish.

It’s certainly bracing to hear Allan talk about “what we went through,” as if he was more concerned about the effect of his son’s kidnapping on himself than on his son.

But, as the story unfolds (with revelations I won’t spoil), we realize that both father and son took actions in the name of doing good that didn’t take into account the consequences for other people. They were hypocritically self-centered in a way that (I think the playwright wants us to see) reflects their privilege.

Like the characters he writes about, the playwright is undeniably well-meaning. But his script reportedly began as his MFA thesis at NYU and, although he has been developing it in the decade since, it contains some tell-tale signs of an inexperienced dramatist, such as poorly motivated but dramatically convenient character exits.

Much more importantly, Josh is supposed to be 28 years old, and a working journalist who reported from a war zone for such prestigious publications as Rolling Stone magazine; he had the wits and the grit to survive as a hostage..  Yet his whiny attacks on his father’s career make him sound like a rebellious teenager who hasn’t had to make his way in the world yet. And, if it might make sense for Josh to try to minimalize the traumatic experience of his kidnapping, the play does so too, which has the effect of trivializing it. (Other works of theater that involved a kidnapping have understood the importance of offering at least a sense of the visceral experience, among them “Kid Victory,”even thought it too focuses on the aftermath.)

All four of the cast members of “Aftermath” are reliable stage veterans who often transcend the limitations of the script, helping the production feel at times like the modern tragedy it aspires to be. Each ultimately calls forth  one of the emotions of characters in classic tragedy: Jill Stern pathos, Awesta Zarif anger, Steven Skybell resentment, and Danny Kornfeld, finally, a sniveling kind of remorse.

Aftermath
A.R.T./NY through November 8
Running time: 110 minutes with no intermission
Tickets: $63-$83
Written by David Zax
Directed by Colton Pometta.
Lighting by Lucrecia Briceño, costumes by Räyya Gracy, scenic design by Chen-Wei Liao, and sound design by Stan Mathabane.
Cast: Danny Kornfeld as Joshua, Steven Skybell  as Allan, Jill Stern as Linda, and Awesta Zarif as Mina

Photographs by Marc J. Franklin