ROYAL COURT THEATRE LONDON – UNTIL 27 JULY 2024
REVIEWED BY JACKIE THORNTON
4****
“We are whispers from the past fading into the future” is projected onto one of two large screens filling the stage in the Jerwood as the audience takes their seats on a sunny Monday evening.
No one quite knows what to expect, least of all the lone actor, who tonight is comedy legend Meera Syal. Over 16 performances, 16 different actors have bravely agreed to enact the latest work of award winning Iranian playwright, Nissam Soleimanpour, who is also beamed in live (or so we think) from his study in Berlin.
We are speedily put at ease as an AI voice comically delivers instructions for Meera to don white socks and black slippers, which we later discover match those worn by Nissam. (The whole piece is awash with precise symbols – a plant, a Persian rug, a bracelet – weaving in and out of the narrative.)
Then Nissam’s jolly bespectacled face fills the screen, every bit endearing and unassuming. It all feels quite playful and haphazard as the illusion of Nissam’s daily life with wife Shiran and dog Echo plays out as we’re made to feel like this a preamble, not really part of the show. Nothing could be further from the truth though as every inch of this play, artfully directed by Omar Elerian, reads like it has been intricately engineered so as to disorient, unsettle and challenge the audience.
Meera and Nissam are old friends which adds a beautiful intimacy to the puppet and puppet master relationship but one suspects that the quirky, self-deprecating playwright achieves a similar warm dynamic with all of his actors.
Although mainly tasked with vocalising Nissam’s thoughts on immigration, identity and
home, either by way of an earpiece or by reading script projected on screen, Meera is just as sharp and insightful as she confides how she has come to regard not belonging as a gift
since it offers the ability to see the bigger picture.
Echo wishes to explore the nature of storytelling itself as Nissam bravely questions where, when, who and what home is by sharing his own experiences of fleeing his beloved Iran. The result is a dazzling, profound and self-reflective piece which invites its audience to sit up close to its construction and marvel at its form.