White Rabbit, Red Rabbit at Duchess Theatre

The nature of White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, currently being performed at the Duchess Theatre every Monday through June and July (there will be one additional stopover in August and two in September, as of this writing), is so much in the staging that one chafes against the limitations of a review. Eyes have likely been caught by its splashy, shapeshifting celebrity casting (David Tennant, Jodie Whittaker and Riz Ahmed are among its future custodians), or by the evening’s high concept premise. The actor in question will have no rehearsal behind them, and only the most minimal awareness of the play’s material, which they will largely discover in real time as they read the script live onstage. The resulting shot of anything goes immediacy will ensure a genuinely different experience each night, but perhaps this review can convey some key details of its opening performance.

It can be reported that on this occasion, White Rabbit‘s solo performer was Lucian Msamati, who arrived in an unassuming Adidas shirt before launching into playwright Nassim Soleimanpour’s wry text with brio (the text in question is a kind of formal address, and this review has followed suit). Furthermore, it should be confirmed that the immediate sense of rapport between Msamati and the crowd – and the potential for live-wire spontaneity therein – was the driving force of the evening, and that Soleimanpour wants it that way. Many of the night’s most electric moments were wholly unplanned: when a prop was requested from the audience to assist Msamati and the two attendees selected to join him onstage (in these privileges, the front row is given pride of place), it arrived in the form of a scarf emblazoned with an Arsenal logo, prompting equal cheers and boos from the crowd. When a prop was requested to serve as a carrot within an imagined scenario meticulously laid out by the playwright (the degree to which the play’s title is quite literal may surprise you), an actual carrot was presented, prompting consideration of just how often such serendipity has graced the play over its 3,000+ performances to date. Additionally, Msamati doggedly committed – at Soleimanpour’s request – to carrying out a full headcount of the entire audience, before a stagehand cut him short to confirm the number at 478. So flawlessly timed is the intrusion for maximum comic effect that one may question if it was planned that way, before wisely resolving to let the mystery be.

Of course, Soleimanpour very much counts the actor amongst that crowd, bringing the total count to 479. It’s a fitting result; for all the charm and comic timing Msamati brought to his reading, he was left as much a captive audience to the steadily unfurling words on the playwright’s page as we ourselves are. While a narrative of sorts may take shape over time in White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, along with a handful of theatrical conventions (Soleimanpour is well-versed in the Chekhov’s gun principle), the play is mainly here to revel in the potential of live theatre; of communing with an audience by way of a surrogate, and with the surrogate by way of the text. Much of what Msamati read originates from over a decade ago (25^th April 2010, to be exact) in the Iranian city of Shiraz, from which the writer is banned from travelling. With no small amount of puckish joy and genuine longing, Soleimanpour’s words give shape to the desire to reach out and effect change from a sheet of paper, if not in person; for his work to travel and command a space, even if he may not. The lines are from far away and long ago, yet what happens next remains dependent on him, and his play’s chief pleasure (putting aside simply seeing it unfold moment by moment) is the final sense that we’ve had a genuine encounter with him, even through layers of remove. On this particular occasion, this became quite literally true when the genuine article took the stage after the play’s conclusion, a sight made uniquely affecting by the preceding hour and change spent in his head.

Ultimately, White Rabbit makes for an irresistible and ultimately affecting exercise in audience participation, the limits of actorly self-consciousness (witness an esteemed Shakespearean enacting the movements of a humanoid rabbit) and the general possibilities of live theatre. Come play’s end, you’ll likely feel a genuine rapport with the actor in question, with your seated company and with Nassim Soleimanpour himself.