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Review: White Rabbit Red Rabbit (@sohoplace)

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Review by Sam Waite

 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

 

The writers at All That Dazzles – reviewers, Dazzlers, ugh them again, and whatever else you may call us – try to avoid spoiling the shows we review. Sure, we'll give you the set-up to a certain degree, and might reference well-known scenes and songs when we're covering the classics, but we try not to remove too much of the thrill of a first viewing. Still, I can't overstate the challenge of reviewing the West End debut of White Rabbit Red Rabbit – playing a limited, star-studded run at @sohoplace – a show for which any hint of a narrative or a style of performance feels like saying far too much.

 


Written by Nassim Soleimanpour in 2010, when his refusal to partake in compulsory military service denied him the right to a passport, White Rabbit Red Rabbit would go on to travel the world in his stead. While Soleimanpour was confined to his native Iran, his words would be read by many and heard by even more – at any given performance, at least one person will begin the evening unaware of his play’s content. That person, that guaranteed neophyte, is the performer. The Actor – a charming Nick Mohammed for this first West End performance – learns their role only seconds before their audience hear the words. With a different person leading the show every night, the words remain the same, but nothing is set in stone.

 

Beginning with the opening of an envelope, housing the as-yet unread text, the play’s impact is largely in the hands of Nassim himself – or rather, whatever glimmers of personality The Actor adds to his words. Delightful and compelling as Mohammed was, it seems pointless to dwell on his particular take, when no one beyond the 585 (as confirmed by a helpful front of house member) people in attendance will be able to see it. Our real protagonist, the true antagonist, the most relevant observer, proves to be Nassim himself, as he was in April of 2010. The sharp observations are his, as are the absurdist humour and crushing tension that precariously balance throughout this hour of shared experience.


 

Experience feels the right word for White Rabbit Red Rabbit, rather than calling it a play. It certainly functions as a play, with words from the page spoken aloud in an effort to tell stories, evoke emotion, and encapsulate themes. But there's an immediacy, a sense of genuine presence, that separates the events on stage from merely being something told in real time, or whose setting is listed as “the modern day.” Nassim, our imagined character, and perhaps Soleimanpour, our absent emcee, remind us how malleable concepts like freedom and autonomy truly are, wisely acknowledging at how our emotions and actions can be swayed by words from hundreds of miles away, but to paper more than a decade in the past.

 

His writing is strong and his voice blisteringly original, the awkwardness of the setup mined for laughs that thankfully continue once The Actor and The Audience, unwitting characters ourselves, settle into the performance. Events in the stories told become more complex, and the audience is asked to imagine the scenarios in increased detail, something Soleimanpour throws plenty of comedy into. His ability to snap between horrific ideas around mortality and loss of liberty to having hundreds of people laughing at loud is as fascinating as it is impressive, and these heavier moments never threaten to overwhelm or diminish the humour, which he finds ways of maintaining until the final moments.


 

Here is where a review becomes even more difficult, where other members of the creative team ought to be acknowledged. Beyond the producers, with lead producer Phoebe Noles, Lambert Jackson, and Soleimanpour himself credited, White Rabbit Red Rabbit has no creative team – no director, no lighting or sound design. Even the set is without a designer, a lone chair, small table, and two glasses of water there purely in service of the script, rather than some other artistic vision. @sohoplace’s stage is stripped bare, the table and chair on a slow but ever-turning revolve to allow the entire audience equal viewership. Soleimanpour writes in the programme about wishing to challenge conventions of performing and viewing a play, and the bare was of it all, the deliberate lack of any hints to a tone or topic, certainly help to shape an unknown (unknowable, perhaps) space in which anything, for all we know, could be about to happen.

 

Somehow, having seen White Rabbit Red Rabbit performed after being vaguely aware of its peculiar charms for several years, I find myself both understanding why it has had international success, and mystified that something like this made it to one stage, let alone countless venues across the world. Nassim Soleimanpour found a way to travel the globe without the freedom to leave Iran, and to force audiences wherever his words reach to contend with difficult, deeply uncomfortable themes through the work of performers as fresh to the text as their viewers. Perhaps even more impressive, he put across these harrowing ideas, these truly thought-provoking themes, all while making us laugh, collaborate, and feel like we've truly gotten to know a man who we have never met.

 

White Rabbit Red Rabbit plays at @sohoplace until November 9th

 

For tickets and information, including the performer scheduled for each date, visit https://sohoplace.org/shows/white-rabbit-red-rabbit

 

 

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