Nassim Soleimanpour’s 2010 play has been performed in more than 30 languages and, like many of the Iranian theatre-maker’s projects, it’s a cold-read show – delivered by someone who hasn’t seen or rehearsed the script. There is a frisson when a performer relying on their wits and an audience unsure of what to expect encounter a text for the very first time.
This theatre is in the round, so there is an unhurried revolve – the only flourish for a show that unfolds under unchanging light, on a stage that is bare save for two glasses of water on a red metal table, and a chair holding a large red envelope.
Every show has a different performer pull the script from the envelope. I see Michael Sheen, who takes a comically deep breath as he turns the first page. He boggles slightly at some of the stage directions – and yes, he will be asked to impersonate an ostrich – but although it sounds like an ordeal, Soleimanpour isn’t out to get the guest performer.
Olly Alexander, Miriam Margolyes, Adjoa Andoh and Paloma Faith will all follow in this starry Soho run. Each will undoubtedly bring their own qualities but the work suits Sheen’s gift for whimsy, indignation and rousing exhortation. He also navigates an eager-beaver crowd projecting a giggly, almost protective energy towards him: there are no shortage of volunteers for audience participation.
A weave of rabbit-based fables, the piece is “not so much a play as an experiment”, Soleimanpour has explained. What does it investigate? We’re asked to consider risk, complicity and conformity, but ultimately White Rabbit Red Rabbit explores the laws of live theatre – the way in which an audience let disbelief ebb and flow; our pleasure in watching an event take shape even without rehearsal. And if there’s an unforeseen accident – well that only heightens our pleasure.
Now based in Berlin, Soleimanpour wrote the play, his text says, in the city of Shiraz in 2010. It is moving to ponder the journeys of this text sent out from a repressive state. Perhaps inevitably, performed in the heart of London’s entertainment district, it skews playful rather than grave – it can’t quite manage the high stakes it invokes.
• At @sohoplace, London, until 9 November
