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American playwright Tony Kushner wrote the most famous play of 1990s with his seven-hour, two-part creation “Angels in America,” which won a Pulitzer Prize and many other awards. “Angels” was commissioned by San Francisco’s Eureka Theater, then under the direction of Tony Taccone, who now heads the Berkeley Rep. 

On Wednesday this team reunited, with Taccone directing a strong West Coast premiere at Berkeley Rep of Kushner’s latest work “Homebody/Kabul.” 

Written presciently before September 11 of last year, “Homebody/Kabul” is a long, complicated and fascinating play about the political history of Afghanistan, and how things got to be where they are right now. Running nearly four hours, this is not a production for the half-hearted. 

“Homebody/Kabul” opens with a lengthy monologue in which a middle-aged Englishwoman known only as the Homebody (Michelle Morain) sits in the armchair of her comfortable English living room, talking to the audience about her interest in travel and her interest in Afghanistan. 

A cultural dilettante, she reads bits of Afghan history from a travel book, mixing it with references to her present life. She jokes about her dead marriage, and about taking her husband’s anti-depressants occasionally so she can understand what he’s feeling. 

The play then shifts to the Afghan capital of Kabul, and becomes a spy story of sorts. Here a British scientist (Charles Shaw Robinson) and his angry, rebellious teenage daughter (Heidi Dippold) arrive in Kabul to investigate the sudden disappearance of his wife and her mother. 

Robinson is wonderful as the abstracted, disconnected, twitty scientist trying to come to terms with an emotional catastrophe. Julian Lopez-Morillas is effective as an Afghan physician recounting the details of a brutal torture, but one with mysteriously no corpse. 

Hector Correa exudes danger and evangelism as a supervising Taliban minister, threatening and interrogating. Bruce McKenzie supplies both intrigue and comic relief as a low-key but mysterious British aid worker, who appears to be a heroin addict, but who is able to supply travel papers and unusual access. 

Harsh Nayyar is the mysterious guide and Esperanto poet who takes British daughter Priscilla through the dark back streets of Kabul as she tries to solve the mystery of her mother’s disappearance. Jacqueline Antaramian is a former Afghan librarian who raves against men and governments in a bizarre mix of English, Farsi, Russian, French and Greek. 

“Homebody/Kabul” creates a surreal world of conflicting dreams and conflicting realities. It’s a play about the tragedy of Kabul and the people who live there. 

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Once a fully functioning city, war among the superpowers has turned Kabul into an apocalyptic wasteland. By the play’s end, like a good spy story, there are question marks about what really happened. 

The production has a few false notes. In one scene where a Kabul hat salesman (Waleed Zuaiter) obsesses over a Frank Sinatra record, the moment seems contrived and out of place. Further, the opening monologue overreaches its dramatic capacities, becoming a college lecture as much as a play. 

Although the performances are generally strong, Dippold’s teenage Priscilla speaks many of her lines looking downward, or with her back to the audience. Combining that behavior with the strong emotion of her character, and her swallowed British accent, it is sometime hard to understand what she’s saying. Nor, distractingly, does this character look like her parents. 

This is a story about the destruction of our human society, told in a mysterious hall of mirrors. Underneath lie themes of political adventurism and gender persecution. 

“Homebody/Kabul” is an old-fashioned four-hour, three-act, two-intermission play, the way theater used to be in the days when it was the big event in town, before television and radio. 

You go to this play to think about the show, enjoy the intermissions, eat and drink between the acts, talk about it, and make an evening out of contemplating the story. This is not light theater for the faint-hearted. 

“Homebody/Kabul” gives the brain and the heart a workout. It’s a big treat for real theater-goers. 

“Homebody/Kabul,” presented by the Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison Street, through June 23. Call (510) 647-2949, or visit www.berkeleyrep.org. 

Planet theater reviewer John Angell Grant has written for “American Theatre,” “Backstage West,” “Callboard,” and many other publications. E-mail him at jagplays@hotpop.com or fax him at 1-419-781-2516.