Theatre review: White Rabbit Red Rabbit

I've seen Nassim Soleimanpour's second and third plays structured as cold reads for a different performer every night, but had missed his original hit which, out of necessity, created his signature format in the first place. But following the run of ECHO at the Royal Court a couple of months ago, White Rabbit Red Rabbit now returns for an equally starry West End run at @sohoplace, the theatre with a name so current it's recently invested heavily in Global Hypercolor shares. This afternoon the comedian, actor and rapper Ben Bailey-Smith was the guest reader of Soleimanpour's script, something which threatened to derail what turns out to be a pretty dark tale, as a couple of audience members seemed to think they were at a gig and proceeded to heckle him. Fortunately they soon got the message that Bailey-Smith had a script to stick to. In subsequent shows Soleimanpour has expanded on the concept to add himself to the action remotely, but here we get the format in its purest form.

The later shows have also been a lot more explicit about the playwright's own life story and how it affects both the format and the content; here we do get told about the author being unable to put on a traditional play because at the time of writing (2010) Iran hadn't granted him a passport so he couldn't leave. So Bailey-Smith walks onto a stage with only a chair with his sealed script on it, and a table with two glasses of water, a vial of powder and a spoon on it. As the venue is in-the-round, these are also on a revolve so that, even in a show that hasn't been blocked, everyone can be taken in by the action.

Without going into spoilers what the performer has to read out mostly revolves around a weird fairytale about a white rabbit visiting a circus, and a creepier story about Soleimanpour's unstable uncle performing experiments on white rabbits that include dyeing one of them red. The performer is asked to rope in a number of audience members to help tell the stories, as well as set up a challenge that puts them into a position they might not have thought they were signing up for. Despite dealing with matters of life, death and crushing responsibility the show largely maintains a light tone, although a very specific list of possible suicide methods is coldly disturbing and caused at least one walkout. At first I worried Bailey-Smith seemed to feel under pressure to perform and was doing too much, but as he relaxed into letting the script guide him he became a likeable guide through Soleimanpour's twisted fairytales, an interesting piece of the puzzle of how the writer's gone on to expand and evolve his signature style since.

White Rabbit Red Rabbit by Nassim Soleimanpour is booking until the 9th of November at @sohoplace theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 5 minutes straight through.