White Rabbit Red Rabbit at the Duchess Theatre – review
- Deorah Marks
- 3 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Nassim Soleimanpour’s unrehearsed solo show returns, with Lucian Msamati taking to the stage on press night!
There’s something wonderfully apropos about White Rabbit Red Rabbit, in its 15th anniversary season, playing once a week on the stage that’s usually home to The Play That Goes Wrong. Nassim Soleimanpour’s almost-solo theatrical tightrope walk, where a different performer enacts a script they’ve never rehearsed, never even seen before, using audience volunteers as supporting cast members, is the very definition of a play where almost everything could go wrong.
That it went off without a hitch on opening night says as much for the up-for-it but respectful crowd as it does for the cold-reading skills and calm good humour of actor Lucian Msamati. Future interpreters of the work over the next couple of months include David Tennant, Riz Ahmed, Luke Thompson, Jodie Whittaker and David Harewood, among others, and no two performances are identical.
It’s a 60-minute covenant between audience and a performer flying by the seat of their pants, filtered through words written 16 years ago in the Iranian city of Shiraz by playwright and theatre maker Solemainpour at a time when he was unable to leave his home country. An elliptical, abstract text, more experiment than actual play, it’s shot through with cheeky humour but registers as chillingly matter-of-fact on such potentially distressing subjects as coercion, control and suicide.
Translated into 30 languages and seen all over the world, White Rabbit Red Rabbit is as interesting for its history and background as it is in its own right. Without some knowledge of the oppressive regimes that have governed Iran for most of the last half-century, and that it was under such authoritarian pressure that Solemainpour was writing, the anecdotal description of an unsettling experiment involving rabbits might seem obscure to the point of impenetrability. In practice, though, it’s as playful as it is strange and slightly threatening, as it considers freedom, inherited prejudice and trauma, choice and obedience through this highly unconventional prism.
It’s also capable of bringing out some delightful, even admirable, characteristics in our fellow observers. Quite often in the West End these days, audience members don’t need much encouragement to start loudly expressing themselves, but there was something genuinely touching on the night I attended, about the number of people vocally attempting to dissuade Msamati from downing a glass of water, which may or may not be poisoned.
Msamati is a fine actor but a stoical, slightly hesitant sight reader. His innate warmth and charisma mean that he has the audience onside from the very beginning, but it would be fascinating to see how differently White Rabbit Red Rabbit plays out when delivered by a performer who attacks the script with more confidence and flamboyance. Still, this remains a unique, unexpectedly haunting theatrical experience and one that, in the light of events in the Middle East since February, feels extraordinarily timely.
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