Bwave the Cold; it’s Wabbit Season

White Rabbit Red Rabbit, by Nassim Soleimanpour, at the Rachel Browne Theatre, through Jan. 18, 2015

Reviewed by Michelle Palansky

This review is irrelevant. No, really. In some ways, anything I say about White Rabbit Red Rabbit is completely beside the point. Each evening a new performer will open the sealed script, which they have never read before, and perform a cold read of what is essentially a one person show. They each will bring their own strengths and weaknesses, mannerisms and vulnerabilities, and each will deliver an entirely unique piece of theatre.

So this review is irrelevant. Sort of.

Although a brand new performer tackles the piece every night, seventeen brave souls in all, they are the conduits, not merely conduits, but conduits nonetheless for the true focus of the show, the writer Nassim Soleimanpour.

For those theatre goers who choose to see multiple performances of White Rabbit Red Rabbit, they will have the opportunity to see the play funneled through the talents of both English and French performers, skilled improvisers, writers, actors, and a performance artist. But through all of these different vessels, the voice of the writer dominates.

This places me in an unusual position as a theatre reviewer. Normally, I consider the playwright’s work as part of a greater whole. What the writer wants to accomplish has already been percolated through the vision and skill of the director, the various designers, and the actors. But not here. There is no director. There are no costumes. The lighting mostly consists of raising and lowering the house lights. The set is a ladder, a table, a chair, and several items laid out on the table which I cannot discuss because I have no desire to spoil the central conflict of the performance.

What we do have is an Iranian playwright who completely shatters the fourth wall, controlling and directing the actor and audience at every turn. And that makes him fair game. Fun.

Because I am going to pay a fair bit of attention to Soleimanpour, I am going to leave him to the side for one moment and return to the actor I saw on the completely sold out opening night, Gordon Tanner. Cold reads can be a nightmare in the wrong hands, but Tanner had exactly the right paws for the job. Any nervousness the audience might have had about watching an actor stumble through a cold read were eased from the moment he hit the stage. Tanner was confident and charming, he read well and conversationally, and he was able to continually scan ahead slightly so he could catch the drift of the monologue and make eye contact with the audience. His 30 second rabbit sketch was amazing to behold. Tanner ran a tight show and the performance came in at 60 minutes; according to the usher, they expect the play will run anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes depending on the night.

Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour

Back to Soleimanpour. The premise of the performance is that the writer, like many other young people in Iran, has been denied a passport because he refused military duty. He is stuck. But he has a great thirst to reach out and communicate with the world at large, so he writes a play that can travel around the world for him.

Through the monologue, he speaks directly to the audience, and by the end of the show we have a very clear image of Soleimanpour – his physical characteristics, “hairy like chewing gum stuck on the floor of a barber shop,” his speech patterns, his philosophical wrestlings with big pillar themes like freedom, suicide, and manipulation.

Although presented as a monologue, Soleimanpour intends this to be a conversation. He continually encourages the audience to email, contact him on Facebook, and send him pictures. By the end of the show it feels like you’ve been involved in a highly unusual but strangely rewarding pen pal exchange. He makes contact. In that way, White Rabbit Red Rabbit is a huge success.

He tells us that this is the first play he has written in English, “and it was really fucking hard!” which has its drawbacks and advantages. Sometimes the language feels a little too basic for the complicated themes he is trying to explore, but the simplicity of the language makes it far easier for the unrehearsed actor.

As a writer, Soleimanpour’s skill shines through in the structure of the play. He interrupts the extended monologue with scenarios acted out by volunteers from the audience. His involvement of random audience members simultaneously builds a strong tension of alert wariness, a sense of community amongst the patrons, and an undercurrent of possible complicity. There’s a lot more going on then just some guy standing on stage reading from a script. It is well done.

Where the playwright and I part ways is in his exploration of complicity and manipulation. Full disclosure – in the past I have participated in simulation activities that were designed to reenact the experience of certain hardships from Jewish history, including the innate instinct to obey authority. As philosophical and psychological explorations they were very effective. I did not have a similar reaction to the way these themes were explored in White Rabbit Red Rabbit. It’s a very difficult thing to accomplish. An audience, especially a Winnipeg audience, brings a strong sense of good will. It feels unfair to draw comparisons between an audience’s desire to help a show continue to its scripted ending with the passive complicity of observers to a tragedy. Fuller disclosure – several audience members seemed overcome by the strong feelings that the performance elicited, so I might just have a dark, cold heart.

Regardless of the state and temperature of my heart, I strongly recommend White Rabbit Red Rabbit. It is an enjoyable and unusual performance. Bwave the cold; it’s wabbit season.

White Rabbit Red Rabbit, by Nassim Soleimanpour, presented by Theatre Projects Manitoba, with a different actor every night (see cast list here), runs through January 18, 2015 , at the Rachel Browne Theatre, 211 Bannatyne Ave., Winnipeg MB.