In 2013, Charles Randolph-Wright—the director of Motown the Musical, which had opened on Broadway a few months earlier—appeared on PBS News Hour to plug Love in Afghanistan, a new play he’d written that was premiering at Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage. “I read a story about the practice of bacha posh, which is young girls dressing up as boys to survive, and it stunned me,” he explained. “I thought, ‘I have to tell this story.’ I couldn’t get it out of my head.”
With the U.S. struggling to maintain security and end combat in the region, a play about star-crossed lovers certainly was timely. And never underestimate American viewers’ fascination with war as entertainment; there’s a reason the Showtime drama series Homeland won eight Emmys and five Golden Globes in its 2011–2020 run. But Love in Afghanistan might have fallen under the headline of “too soon.”
Now, with the $2.3 trillion war (technically) in our collective rearview mirror, Randolph-Wright’s engaging drama is making its off-Broadway debut under the vastly improved title Duke & Roya, named for its intriguing central characters: internationally famous American hip-hop star Duke (Jay Ellis of HBO’s Insecure) and high-level Afghan interpreter Roya (Stephanie Nur). “Duke & Roya. Yeah, that pop,” says Duke at their first meeting at Kabul’s Bagram Air Base in 2017. He sees the chemistry. We do, too.
Duke is witty, smart, and charming enough to persuade Roya to travel off-base with him; she dresses as a boy—as she did growing up, which afforded her an education and freedom to do things like leaving the house alone—but her disguise isn’t enough to shield them from everyday violence. A cup of tea quickly turns into an international incident, involving military police and both of their parents—Roya’s sharp, broad-minded interpreter father, Sayeed (Oslo’s Dariush Kashani), who has worked at Bagram for 14 years, and Duke’s mother, Desiree (the dazzling Noma Dumezweni, Broadway’s original Hermione in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), a brilliant, well-connected senior VP at World Bank in the United Arab Emirates.
And let’s remember that it’s 2017: Between suicide bombings, our president’s mixed messages, and the growing Taliban presence, it’s nearly impossible to leave Afghanistan. Sayeed has been waiting for years for visas for his family. “All of us working here realized there was danger, and because of it, we interpreters were promised U.S. visas,” he tells Desiree defeatedly.
Despite spanning 2017 to 2025, Duke & Roya could use condensing, especially in the somewhat plodding Act 1; the action-packed Act 2, meanwhile, which opens Dubai—“Maybe a destination that feels like a vacation/ Is my mind’s mission Roya is my engine,” Duke raps (the grabby original music is by Ronvé O’Daniel)—almost feels rushed, though it includes a plot twist that you absolutely, 100 percent, will not see coming. The gasps it elicited!
There’s also a somewhat confusing subplot concerning Roya and a prisoner named Behrouz that neither Randolph-Wright nor director Warren Adams manage to make work. Then again, the course of true love never did run smooth.
Duke & Roya opened June 24, 2025, at the Lucille Lortel Theatre and runs through Aug. 23. Tickets and information: dukeandroya.com
