Amir Arison: Last News

Gordon Cox Theater EditorAfter nine seasons on the hit TV series “The Blacklist,” actor Amir Arison’s next step is starring on Broadway in “The Kite Runner.” Which is pretty surprising for a guy who’d decided he was done with theater.Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below:“I didn’t want to do much stage anymore,” Arison recalled on the new episode of Stagecraft, Variety‘s theater podcast. Prior to “The Blacklist,” he’d appeared in several Off Broadway productions, but, he says, “I remember just depleting myself completely and not [being] sure if the rewards outweighed the toll.”The opportunity to star in “The Kite Runner” first came to Arison in the weeks before “The Blacklist” had been picked up for its 10th season, so he was low-key looking for a job.

Marilyn Stasio Theater CriticPlaywright Matthew Spangler’s adaptation of “The Kite Runner,” Khaled Hosseini’s bestselling 2005 novel about the friendship of two boys living parallel lives in Afghanistan, is a heartbreaker – but so uplifting, it’s worth the pain.The scribe puts it succinctly when he tells us, in a program note for the current Broadway production, that “this is a story about a father and son; two best friends; a husband and wife; immigration; the relative peace of 1970s Afghanistan; global politics; class and ethnicity; and much more.” More pointedly, he adds that, above all else, this epic-scaled drama is “a story of guilt and redemption.”If there’s a fault in Spangler’s meticulous adaptation and Giles Croft’s dynamically inventive direction, it’s that Amir (Amir Arison, who grasps this demanding role with both hands and holds on for dear life), the flawed hero based on the author’s biographical persona, is so exceedingly selfish and cruel to his loyal best friend in Act I, it takes herculean acts of atonement in Act II to earn his righteous redemption. As narrator of his own story, Amir initially presents himself as an adult, but a call from Afghanistan offers him “a way to be good again” if he will return home — and to the pivotal events that forged his character at the age of 12.

Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 tearjerker novel “The Kite Runner” has no shortage of terrible traumas: deaths, beatings, a rape, the disastrous takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. To say the very least, it’s a lot.  All that immense pain could prove overwhelming for the reader, yet the author’s gift for writing sumptuous imagery and tender, nuanced relationships softens the blow.

EXCLUSIVE: The Blacklist is saying farewell to two series regulars, including one of NBC drama’s longest-serving cast members, Amir Arison. The actor, who has portrayed Aram Mojtabi for the past nine seasons, is leaving as he is preparing to make his Broadway debut this summer in the starring role of Amir in The Kite Runner.