Review: White Rabbit Red Rabbit

This play may actually be unreviewable. How do you review an actor when they have not rehearsed what they performed? What’s the point when they’ll never perform it again? You can’t review a director when there isn’t one. So what’s left? Well, the script really. And the experience.

And it’s an experience like no other. This is a play about scripts and it’s a play about plays. About the nature of scripts and plays. About the dynamic of someone in someplace at sometime putting pen to paper and then the time and space between that moment and the moment when those words are passed on to the audience through the actor.

I find the idea of something I produce  being found in the future by someone with no connection to me and consumed by them and interpreted in a way which I have no control over, very exciting. Nassim Soleimanpour has consciously engaged with that process in a way which makes you acutely aware of the role you play as an audience member. As the actor has never seen the script before, you’re discovering it together. This makes the whole show irrepressibly exciting and compelling from beginning to end. I have never been so engaged with every moment of a play. Because I was a part of it.

Every night there is a different actor. Last night we had Mia Blake, Stephen Lovatt performed on the preview evening. If you go, you could see Kip Chapman or Dai Henwood or someone you’ve never heard of before. Needless to say it’s an entirely different show every night. There’s also a bit of audience participation. It’s mild, don’t let it put you off. But this too means that what happens in each show is unique. I witnessed something last night that can never be replicated. Everyone I spoke to wants to see it again so they have something to compare it to. I am quite seriously considering doing this.

Whilst the the script plays around with the form of plays, it also tackles some big issues about human nature and life and risk and politics and death. It does this on a personal scale and on a universal one. It uses metaphor and story telling but it also uses real life. Soleimanpour, speaks directly to the audience through script and actor in a very intimate way which leaves you feeling like you have a personal and quite profound connection with him.

Everyone will enjoy this but you will particularly enjoy it if you like intellectualising about theatre and creative forms, about communication and artist-audience connections. This is probably the most unique piece of theatre I have ever seen and I really can’t encourage you enough to go see it.

White Rabbit Red Rabbit is on at Q Theatre until 13th July. Tickets are $20-$35.