Here, the delivery is arch and the humor hard to find. The problems begin with the almost hourlong opening monologue, in which a British housewife regales us with her love of language and other cultures, mixed in with anecdotes about her loveless marriage to a boring husband. As a purely theatrical exercise, Nancy Carroll's performance under Jason Southerland's direction as the Homebody is remarkable. She is elegantly coiffed, smartly cynical, and disarmingly self-assured.
But the Homebody should be none of those things. This is the story of a woman who leaves the security of her middle-class life for the unpredictability, the savage beauty of Afghanistan armed only with an outdated tourist guide . It is the act of a person who is smart enough to know that she is being ground down by the soullessness of her life, but also optimistic and naive enough to ''love, love, love the world" and go out to explore it.
Carroll's joyless Homebody makes it seem as if she's going off to commit suicide . When her equally depressive husband and daughter come after her, accompanied by a translator-facilitator supplied by the British government, it becomes all too clear why so many in the East hate so many in the West.
But that wasn't Kushner's intention. Granted, Milton (the husband), Priscilla (the daughter) and Quango (the government aide) aren't nearly as likable as most of the characters in Kushner's other masterworks, ''Angels in America" and ''Caroline, or Change," but here they're barely human.
Helen McElwain plays Priscilla with such fussiness that you wonder if she just forgot to pack the Metamucil before heading off for Afghanistan. Bill Molnar as the father and Nathaniel McIntyre as the aide don't find enough in their characters to make us care about what happens to them.
