Review: White Rabbit Red Rabbit
[Duchess Theatre || with Kathryn Hunter || 80m]
Nassim Soleimanpour’s one-person show White Rabbit Red Rabbit defies easy description. It has no director - Soleimanpour’s words are the direction, and the actor on stage, reading them for the first time, must respond accordingly - no light nor sound design, and minimal staging, with the “set” comprising no more than a stepladder, a table and two chairs. There are no readthroughs, no rehearsals, no tech weeks; there is just an actor doing a cold read and attempting to make some sense of the writer’s instructions and message, so that the audience might take something away from the show. It’s a work that relies heavily on the talent and dramatic instincts of the person on stage and their ability to interact with and involve the audience, the vast majority of whom will also have no idea what to expect, and one that requires real courage and improvisation on the part of the actor surrendering to it.
Last night it was the turn of theatre royalty Kathryn Hunter to take on the task. Known for her remarkable physicality, in many ways Hunter is the perfect person to take on a script that asks its performer to imitate animals and her easy charm and natural warmth, not to mention her delightfully raspy voice, all helped her to break down the invisible wall between performer and audience. This is exactly Soleimanpour’s intention. The script calls for numerous instances of audience participation, with volunteers / unwilling victims invited to share the stage with the actor and perform various Iranian fables, which the actor “directs” with guidance from Soleimanpour’s script, as themes of complicity and culpability begin to assert themselves. The result is a show that is singular and unpredictable.
It’s a remarkable example of what experimental theatre can be in the right hands, yet for all of its weirdness and surrealism, it is quite intricately structured. Soleimanpour is acutely aware of his almost ethereal role as a writer, and his script makes numerous references to the dialogue between writer, performer and audience. Hunter (or whoever else plays the part) becomes an avatar for Soleimanpour, reading his words and following, or perhaps choosing not to follow, his instructions, yet the actor is very pointedly an actor, reading the script along with us for the first time, so that the facade of theatre collapses. This makes for a fascinating dilemma. Soleimanpour can only imagine, from a room in Iran sixteen years ago, what each performance might look like. He speaks to us from the past and we, in turn, respond in the future. He has no control, other than in the words he has written, over what happens on a particular evening and so, much like the actor, he must surrender his authority.
And yet, though each interpretation of the show will be different (I can’t imagine other actors doing an impression of an ostrich, or indeed doing an impression cheetah doing an impression of an ostrich, quite like Kathryn Hunter can, for example…) the broad ideas that Soleimanpour is trying to communicate to the audience - ideas of political oppression and violence, and how these first become normalised and then, over time, almost instinctive - prevent the piece from becoming unwieldy. The text is profound in its themes yet playful in its writing, and though the execution is unpredictable, it culminates in an ending, foreshadowed from the very beginning, that hints at inevitability, as though Soleimanpour is trying to wrestle with the fact that his time, and the time of all of those under the kosh of the Iranian regime, could run out at any moment.
White Rabbit Red Rabbit is a show that deserves to be seen at least once, if only to experience what theatre can be when the barriers are broken down and the actor is essentially as one with the audience. I plan to see it again in September with Archie Madekwe, which I expect will be equally fascinating, not least because his style is so different from Hunter’s, but also because it will be interesting to see how the narrative shifts, how the decisions change and whether Soleimanpour’s intentions hold firm in someone else’s hands. For now though, I highly recommend this and I would love to hear about other people’s experiences of the show with different actors.
Tickets for the various one-off performances of White Rabbit Red Rabbit are available here.