Literate Misfit

So, a quick overview of the premise of this piece for those not familiar: essentially, it's a one man show in which the performer has not seen the script prior to arriving on stage.

As for the plot, it's kind of autobiographical and talks about Nassim Soleimanpour's experiences in Iran, authoritarianism through rabbit allegories and juxtaposes this with pushing the performer and audience in how far they're willing to follow instructions without question.

This wasn't my first time seeing the play - I saw it with MS during the @sohoplace run in 2024 - so there will inevitably be some comparisons drawn here. (You can see my initial reaction to that here and a very brief review here.)

So first of all the Duchess Theatre didn't lend itself to the show quite as well as @sohoplace did imo; this was a traditional stage set up where @sohoplace is in the round and had the advantage of a rotating stage, which made the audience participation a bit easier and felt more intimate. The Duchess set up also dialled down the sense of fear about actually being called up on stage.

We started up with a quick word from the ?producer (or at least someone from the theatre company) to introduce the play and DT to the stage; she sounded terribly nervous, far more so than some of the audience members who were later pulled up on stage.

DT is obviously as endearing as ever. For those who care, he was in a white shirt (which kind of gave me Chandler-vibes?), khaki trousers, green trainers and sporting those glasses from the Rivals promos. I feel like maybe his hair was a bit more bouffant than it has been recently but tbh I wasn't paying that much attention 😅 They probably should have mic'd him up because the crowd was on the louder side so there were points where he was drowned out a bit.

One of the things the play does is to try and smudge the lines between the actor themselves, the actor as the character and the words written by the playwright. As a result, we got frequent "yikes!" faces being pulled by DT as the script pushes at what is being said in the actors voice. (Although I suspect everyone does this!)

Right at the opening, the script welcomes "ladies and gentlemen" in which we had the nice touch of DT exaggeratedly looking further on at the script and then shrugging which I took as him trying to signal that he himself would have chosen a more inclusive greeting.

The most provocative example of a line being put into the actor's mouth is where it calls Iranians "terrorists" which triggered a horrified expression and wild gesturing to indicate this was in the script.

There are some more comedic aspects too, in which we got to see DT's rendition of a cheetah impersonating an ostrich, which was actually magnificent. Possibly the most elegant (and fairly authentic?) ostrich impression I've ever seen.

The other sensitive topic that is covered in the show is

***MAJOR SPOILER ALERT, I ask again to consider whether to read on if you do plan on seeing this in the future***

suicide. At the start of the play, the actor comes on with a vial that has been given to him by the production crew, purportedly containing poison, and this is emptied into one of the glasses of water on the table. During the play these are muddled up so you lose track of which is which and then at the climax, the playwright asks the actor to drink one. The script has played a few mind games over the course of the play with regard to the authenticity of the poison, casting doubt on whether it is a harmless prop or did in fact contain something genuinely harmful.

As the script segues to this topic, it says something along the lines of "before we move on to the topic of suicide" which DT read a bit sardonically with a pause before a cheery "suicide" and a little hop, before moving onto the next part more seriously, where the script recounts 17 ways to commit suicide. Weirdly, "disintegration by God following a polite request" didn't feature on the list??

At the end, the audience is asked which cup he should drink from; I think the audience was possibly more vocal (and maybe more concerned?) than the last time I saw it. He tipped both cups into one and drank that defiantly (think Smart TV heart eating vibes) and proceeded to lie on the floor ahead of his cue.

It was interesting to see how the performances differed: DT pretty much dove straight into it, but MS bought himself a little time ad libbing to the audience while he skimmed throught the first page or so to get his bearings. Iirc I think MS played with the timing a bit more throughout and used some dramatic pauses as a way of giving himself time to think without it being jarringly obvious.

MS grew tired of the counting far sooner than DT did - I think he only went up to the 60s whereas DT was still going beyond 100. This is fairly early on in the play so he also looked a bit unsure about how much flexibility he actually had with it, like he thought we would have to continue counting til the whole auditorium is done.

My general impression is that MS perhaps had more fun with this; it was a little while ago so my memory might be a bit hazy, but I think he worked the audience a bit more and made us call back again if we weren't enthusiastic enough etc and just felt a bit more willing to make additions and bounce off the audience. I feel like perhaps they have slightly different fan demographics which might play into this a bit?

Last night's show was quite nice in that I don't think anyone had prepped and brought the expected props deliberately. This was happening during the @sohoplace run and ruined the vibes a little. However, I thought there were maybe more misplaced laughs last night when the script was dealing with some of the more serious aspects. I don't know if this was down to the audience or if maybe a slightly slower pace would have given some time to think about how the stories related to everything else.

Overall, I think it loses some of its impact on a rewatch, simply because the first time you see the play you're filled with a bit of nervousness - there is some audience participation, so there's a constant question hanging over you of 'what is going to be asked of me as an audience member next?' (Nevermind the performer!) So on a second viewing you lose some of that underlying anxiety which I think lends itself well to some of the themes of the play. But it did give me more time to think about the rabbit stories which the first time round I was so focused on "oh shit am I going to have to go on stage" I didn't have a lot of space to consider fully, and I'm not sure I appreciated how it all fitted together on first viewing.