There is a way to be good again.
Direct from Broadway, The Kite Runner, an outstanding and unforgettable theatrical tour de force is returning to the UK in 2024.
Based on Khaled Hosseini’s international bestselling novel, adapted by Mathew Spangler and directed by Giles Croft, this haunting tale of friendship spans cultures and continents and follows one man’s journey to confront his past and find redemption.
Afghanistan is a country on the verge of war and best friends are about to be torn apart. It’s a beautiful afternoon in Kabul, the skies are full of colour and the streets are full of the excitement of a kite flying tournament, but no one can foresee the terrible incident that will shatter their lives forever.
One Broadway season and two West End seasons have garnered international acclaim for this incredibly powerful story, don’t miss it.
Photographer credit: Barry Rivett for Hotshot Photography.
Pre-show talks (booking essential on 01223 503333)
Running Time
Approximately 2 hours and 35 minutes including an interval
Age Guidance
13+
Tickets
Tuesday - Saturday, 7.30pm
and Thursday & Saturday, 2.30pm: £25/£35/£40/£45 *
* All ticket prices include a £3 per ticket booking fee
Assisted Performances:
BSL Interpreted performance: Wednesday 15 May, 7:30pm
Book now
Stuart Vincent (Amir)
Stuart graduated from Arts Ed London School of Acting.
Theatre credits include: The Play That Goes Wrong (West End); The Kite Runner (Tour); Romeo And Juliet (Orange Tree Theatre); A Midsummer Night's Dream; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; Macbeth (Butterfly Theatre Company); Play On! Shakepeare (Butterfly Theatre/ London Symphony Orchestra); Dance Class (Vienna English Theatre) and Undercover (Stack 10 Theatre).
Television and film credits include: Eastenders (BBC); When The Screaming Starts; The Compendium Of Shitty Men; Good Luck (Cinecore Motion Pictures); Dancing With The Devil; Body Shop (Palikuku Films); What Could Have Been (Stack 10) and Hero (Silver Koi).
Yazdan Qafouri (Hassan/Sohrab)
Theatre credits include: The Lord of The Rings (Watermill Theatre); Othello (The Watermill Theatre); Rumi (London Coliseum); As You Like It (The Watermill Theatre); The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Southwark Playhouse); The Wicker Husband (The Watermill Theatre) The Band (The Royal Haymarket & UK Tour).
Film Credits include: I Came By (Netflix).
Upcoming: The Lord of The Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.
Dean Rehman (Baba)
Dean trained at The Stella Adler Conservatory in New York.
He’s worked extensively in the UK and America. His recent theatre credits include the role of Everyman with Trifle Gathering at the Eden Project and national tour and Ash in Idle They Yammer at The Other Room. Dean has worked on numerous productions with National Theatre Wales including Soul Exchange, Tonypandemonium, De Gabay and Mission Control.
Recent radio includes Under Milk Woods - a reimagining of Dylan Thomas’ work for BBC Radio 3 and award-winning podcast Mattan: Injustice of a Hanged Man for BBC Radio Wales.
Recent TV and film credits include: Delia Balmer (ITV); The Toll (Western Edge Pictures) and Code of Silence (Picture Perfect).
Dean is excited to rejoin the The Kite Runner team for this tour.
Daphne Kouma (Soraya)
Daphne is a fully tri-lingual French/Greek actress.
She trained at Mountview. Stage work includes The Beekeeper of Aleppo (Nottingham Playhouse, Liverpool Playhouse - UK Productions Tour); A Christmas Carol starring Jim Broadbent (Noel Coward Theatre); Offside by Sabrina Mahfouz & Hollie McNish (UK tour & Pleasance Edinburgh Festival); Run for your Wife (Vienna’s English Theatre); Silly Billy (York Theatre Royal); Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat (UK Tour); Stranger Things (Netflix/Secret Cinema co production); Bridgerton and Dirty Dancing (both Secret Cinema).
Film & TV work includes Ruth (ITV); Trial By Jury (Channel 4); Eastenders (BBC); The Bay Series 4 (ITV); Monkfish & The Vessel.
Greek & French voice over work includes Sarah Bernhardt in The Divine Mrs Bernhardt (BBC Sounds); Armando Ianucci’s Avenue 5; Half Bad and The Irregulars (both Netflix), and feature films Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard’s; Bourne 5; Mammia Mia; The Two Faces of January; ITV’s The Durrells and The Tunnel. Audiofile magazine 2023 Earphones Audio award winner for The Paris Apartment.
Bhavin Bhatt (Assef)
Training: De Montfort University BA (HONS) in Drama
Theatre credits include: Assef in The Kite Runner (Playhouse Theatre, London and UK Tour); Wali/Doctor in The Kite Runner (Wyndham’s Theatre); Lucky Pawar in Bring On The Bollywood (Belgrade Theatre); Wali/Doctor in The Kite Runner (UK Tour) and Shailesh in Pereira's Bakery at 76 Chapel Road (Curve Theatre).
Television credits include: Murder In Suburbia (ITV); Spooks (BBC); Leicester Kicks (YouTube) and DFES-I can explain (DVD release).
Dance credits include: Voronia (Sadler's Wells), Bollywood Showstoppers (O2 Arena), Strictly Come Dancing (BBC), Children In Need-The Big Dance (BBC), Dhamaka (O2 Arena), Amaas (Curve Theatre)
Bhavin Bhatt won Best Newcomer at the Asian Media Awards for his role as Assef in The Kite Runner. Bhavin is delighted to return to the production.
Tiran Aakel (Ali/Farid)
Training: East 15
Theatre includes: The EU Killed My Dad (Jermyn Street Theatre); The Girl On The Train (Salisbury Playhouse); The Mother of Kamal (Camden Festival); The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (No 1 tour), The Kite Runner (UK and Dubai Tour); The Jungle (Playhouse Theatre, West End); Umm Kalthoum and The Golden Era (Dubai Opera House); Our White Skoda Octavia (Eastern Angles); Blueprint Medea (Finborough Theatre); Burkas And Bacon Butties (Vault Festival); I was Looking at the Ceiling and then I saw the Sky (UK Tour) .
Television includes: Eastenders; Casualty; The Bill
Ian Abeyesekera (Gen Taheri)
Ian trained at LAMDA
Theatre credits include: The Kite Runner (2020 UK Tour & Dubai); Twelfth Night (RSC); Enemy of the People (Tara Arts); All for Love (Artifice); The Wild Duck (Pentameters); Saturday, Sunday & Monday (Chichester Festival); Romeo & Juliet (Open Hand Theatre) and Pygmalion (Theatre Clwyd).
Television credits include: Days that Shook the World; Switch; Brighton Belles; Crimewatch; The Bill and The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries.
Film credits include: Deadly Advice and Alive & Kicking
Ian has also performed in numerous audio dramas for Audible and Big Finish Productions as well as several short films.
Christopher Glover (Ramin Khan)
Theatre credits in the UK include:
Oliver! (Leeds Playhouse); The Card (New Vic); The Kite Runner (UK/Dubai Tour); Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four (Blackeyed Theatre - UK, Netherlands & China Tour); No Planet B (Sheffield); Aladdin and Alice in Wonderland (Sixteenfeet); Peckham The Soap Opera and Who Cares (Royal Court) and 5 Steps To Privatisation (Royal Court Tottenham).
Theatre credits in Australia include:Constance Drinkwater & The Final Days of Somerset (Darwin Festival/Tour); 7 Deadly Australian Sins and Gods of Spicy Things (Australian Tours); Macbeth (Jute Theatre).
As Associate Director of Jute Theatre Australia, he directed the original productions of Cake (Tropic Sun/JUTE Tour); The Shining Path (Queensland Tour) and Dancing Back Home (Mudlark Tasmania). His play The Mad Mile was nominated for several awards.
Television and film credits includes: Eastenders; Casualty (BBC); Touching Evil; Rules of Engagement; The Bill; Breaking the Band (ITV); Karaoke (BBC/Channel 4); Underworld, Hollyoaks (Channel 4); Enfield Poltergeist (Apple); Judge Dredd (Hollywood Pictures); Heard (Short) and War On Drugs (Talos Films).
Aram Mardourian (Kamal)
Aram trained at the Bath School of Music and Performing Arts. He is fluent in Greek and Armenian.
Theatre credits include: The Beekeeper of Aleppo (Nottingham Playhouse/UK Tour); The Night of the Iguana (The Ustinov Theatre); The Borrowers (The Egg Theatre); Money Heist: The Experience (Netflix/Fever) and King Lear (Newton Park).
Voice Over credits include: The Durrells (ITV) and My Story (Cegos).
Stanton Wright (Wali)
Stanton trained at Mountview.
Theatre Credits Include: Cinderella (Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford); Great Expectations (Mercury Theatre, Colchester); Twelfth Night (Royal Shakespeare Company); Romeo & Juliet (Stafford Gatehouse Theatre); Orlando (Jermyn Street Theatre); Beauty & The Beast (Rose Theatre Kingston); The Kite Runner (Uk Tour); Pictures Of Dorian Gray (Jermyn St Theatre); The Winter’s Tale (National Theatre); The Lion In Winter (English Theatre Frankfurt); All Or Nothing (West End And On Tour); Lord Of The Flies (Courtyard Theatre, Hereford); Take Me Here By The Dishwasher (Barbican); This Moose Belongs To Me (Unicorn Theatre/Brunskill & Grimes); Jackie The Baboon (Orange Tree Theatre/Brunskill & Grimes).
Film credits include: Belly Of The Beast (Short); White Girl (Short); Out Of The Box (Short); Rum (Short).
Amar Aggoun (Ensemble)
Amar is an actor, writer and filmmaker from Leicester.
He trained at LAMDA and graduated in 2015.
Previous credits include: Ian Hislop & Nick Newman’s The Wipers Times (The Watermill Theatre, West End and UK Tour (also appearing in BBC’s ‘100th Anniversary of Passchendaele’ event) and Americana by Hungry B*tches Productions.
He has also written, directed and acted in several festival selected short films including This Night of Mine; The Mysterious Ritual of The Sun and Ziri the Outpatient.
Sulin Hasso (Ensemble)
Sulin is an Actor and Writer who has trained with The Actors Class and Unseen Drama School. Her theatre credits include Maryland (Riverside Studios); Bard in the Yard (Turbine Theatre) and Repeat Signal (November Club).
Film/TV Credits include Ancient Empires (History Channel); Gangs of London (HBO/Pulse Films); Pennyworth (Warner Brothers) and The Yellow Wallpaper (The Nimrud Productions).
Sulin was nominated for Best Screenwriter for her short film The Yellow Wallpaper, which premiered at Underwire Film Festival.
Hanif Khan (Tabla)
UK based Tabla player, Hanif Khan is the son of the renowned tabla player Ustad Hidayat Khan. He is a much sought after percussionist and performs with both Indian and European musicians. He is an accomplished classical trained musician. His career has included international performances in Europe, the Middle East and North America as well as UK wide performances including prestigious concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, The Royal Opera House, Edinburgh International Festival, Glastonbury, and Womad festival. His audiences have included members of the British Royal Family. He has been the resident Tabla player on The Kite Runner since 2013.
Khaled Hosseini (Author)
Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. His father was a diplomat in the Afghan Foreign Ministry and his mother taught Farsi and history at a high school in Kabul. In 1976, the Foreign Ministry relocated the Hosseini family to Paris. They were ready to return to Kabul in 1980, but by then their homeland had witnessed a bloody communist coup and the invasion of the Soviet Army. The Hosseinis sought and were granted political asylum in the United States, and in September 1980 moved to San Jose, California. Hosseini graduated from high school in 1984 and enrolled at Santa Clara University, where he earned a BSc in Biology in 1988. The following year, he entered the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, where he earned a medical degree in 1993. He completed his residency at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and was a practising internist between 1996 and 2004.
In March 2001, while practising medicine, Hosseini began writing his first novel, The Kite Runner, which was published by Riverhead Books in 2003. That debut went on to launch one of the biggest literary careers of our time.
Today, Khaled Hosseini is one of the most recognized and best-selling authors in the world. His books, The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns and And the Mountains Echoed, have been published in over 70 countries and sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.
In 2006, Khaled was appointed a goodwill ambassador for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Inspired by a trip he made to Afghanistan with the UNHCR, he later established the Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, which provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan. He lives in northern California with his wife and two children.
Matthew Spangler (Playright)
Matthew Spangler’s plays have been produced on Broadway (Hayes Theatre), in the West End (Wyndham’s Theatre and the London Playhouse), off-Broadway (59E59 Theatre), the Dubai Opera House, Dublin Theatre Festival, Carthage Theatre Festival in Tunisia, and at many theatres around the world.
Plays include: The Beekeeper of Aleppo from the novel by Christy Lefteri, The Kite Runner from the novel by Khaled Hosseini, Albatross based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Operation Ajax about the CIA/MI6 coup in Iran, The Story of Zahra from the novel by Hanan al-Shaykh, Striking Back based on the book by Mary Manning and Sinead O’Brien, Tortilla Curtain from the novel by T.C. Boyle, The Forgotten Empress about Mughal Empress Noor Jahan, and Shady Hills from the stories of John Cheever.
Matthew is Professor of Performance Studies at San José State University in California where he teaches courses in how refugees and asylum-seekers are represented through the arts.
Giles Croft (Director)
In 1985, Giles was appointed artistic director of the Gate Theatre, London.
In 1989 he joined the National Theatre as literary manager before becoming the artistic director of the Palace Theatre, Watford, in 1995. Giles was artistic director of Nottingham Playhouse from 1999 to 2017. Over his career he has directed more than 50 plays, many of which have toured the UK or transferred to London.
Giles first directed The Kite Runner in 2013 and since then it has toured five times, had two seasons in the West End and been performed in Dubai. In 2022 the production completed a successful on Broadway and will be touring the US this year.
More recently Giles has worked on projects with actors as diverse as Stephen Fry, Toby Jones, Emily Atack & James Norton.
Giles is also a playwright and his work has been performed widely in the UK and Europe.
Barney George (Designer)
Barney is a designer and maker for theatre, live events and creative spaces. He has designed sets and costumes for over ninety stage productions, ranging from regional and international touring to London's West End.
His creative journey began as a film and television prop maker in a family run business. Barney continues to enjoy collaborating with artists and makers from diverse disciplines, reflecting his own broad creative background. He lives and works in the UK.
Charles Balfour (Lighting Designer)
Theatre credits include: The Corn is Green, Rutherford and Son, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (all National Theatre); Romeo and Juliet, A Museum in Baghdad, The Seven Acts of Mercy, Miss Littlewood, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Alchemist, Queen Anne, Hecuba, The Christmas Truce, I’ll Be the Devil (Royal Shakespeare Company); Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Queen Anne, Richard III, Mojo, Posh, Through the Leaves (West End); The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Donmar Warehouse); The Suppliant Women (Edinburgh Lyceum/Young Vic); Torn, The River, Choir Boy, Chicken Soup with Barley, Now or Later, The Ugly One (Royal Court); The River (Broadway); Minetti (Edinburgh International Festival); The Events (Young Vic/New York Theatre Workshop); Ah, Wilderness!, The Girlfriend Experience, The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Young Vic); Our Lady of Kibeho, The Pope (NorthamptonRoyal); Orlando,The Accrington Pals (Manchester Royal Exchange).
Dance and opera credits include: Tosca (Karlstad, Sweden); War Requiem, La Triviata (ENO); Sadko, Carmen (Flanders Opera/Bratislava); La Bianca Notte (Hamburg Opera); OperaShots, La Voix Humaine (Royal Opera House); Carmen, Werther and Saul (Opera North).
Over 30 works with the Richard Alston Dance Co. Other choreographers include Wayne McGregor, Aletta Collins and Rosemary Butcher; Scottish, Birmingham, Stuttgart, San Francisco, Atlanta and Vienna Ballets and Beijing Dance Academy.
Jonathan Girling (Composer)
Drew Baumohl (Sound Designer)
Drew trained at The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, graduating in 2003.
Previous sound designs include: The Kite Runner (Broadway, West End and the national tours); Enemy of the People, Pride and Prejudice, Home, Darkness Darkness, HOME, Time and the Conways, Richard III, My Judy Garland Life, Forever Young, Of Mice and Men, The Importance of Being Earnest, Private Lives, Grandpa in my Pocket: Teamwork, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Blithe Spirit, Vertigo (Nottingham Playhouse); The Threepenny Opera (Graeae Theatre Company); I Dare You (Leicester CURVE/Nottingham Playhouse); Mary Shelley (Shared Experience); Miss Nightingale (Mr Bugg Presents); Sweet Charity, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The New Wolsey Theatre) Volpone, Dr Faustus, Workshop Negative (Tangle Theatre Company); Soonchild (Red Earth); Dissidents (Tricycle Theatre); Stacked, Bait (Almeida Theatre); It Kind of Looks like a Doughnut (Leicester CURVE); Influence, The Dream Collector, Life Raft, Dust, Dreamtime (Derby Theatre); Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk (CAST Doncaster) Ritual (Birmingham Rep) Dick Whittington, Peter Pan, Jack and the Beanstalk, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, The Legend of Robin Hood, Snow Whitw (Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal); DNA, Seance on a Sunday Afternoon, Empty Bed Blues, Smile, The Wiz (Lakeside Arts).
