Sylvia Khoury’s Selling Kabul is a play that works like an ornate watch, carefully set to the second. Each part in this meticulously planned, Pulitzer Prize-nominated script moves with the precision and timing of a well-oiled machine.

Part kitchen sink drama, part espionage thriller, it follows a family in Afghanistan in 2013 as they navigate the brutality of war. While visually impressive, and often well-acted, this production from Red Stitch struggles to achieve the precision needed for Khoury’s tightly wound script to work.

Nicole Nabout and Claudia Greenstone in Selling Kabul. Photo © Jodie Hutchinson

Taroon (Khisraw Jones-Shukoor) hasn’t left his sister’s apartment in four months. He’s waiting for the results of a VISA application that’ll allow him to immigrate to the U.S. after his work as a translator for the American forces made him a target of the Taliban. But the internet isn’t working. Still, he paces between a blank laptop screen and a muted television, a baby crying in the hallway just outside.

Much of Khoury’s script works in a similar way; juxtaposing high-stakes anticipation and suspense against a backdrop of everyday grievances or banal domestic issues. A life-saving VISA...