BY
MARGARETTA WA GACHERU (posted 27 september 2017))
Philip
Coulson is best known in Nairobi for being a prominent lawyer. But last
Saturday night at Braeburn Theatre, he joined a long line of international
‘A-listed actors’ to do a ‘cold read’ of Nassim Soleimanpour’s audacious
script, ‘White Rabbit Red Rabbit’.
The Iranian
playwright’s highly innovative and interactive one-man show has been translated
into no less than 20 languages (but never his mother tongue, Farsi) and staged
in major cities all over the world. Yet the show has no director and no rehearsal
time.
Nor does an
actor have a chance to see the text until just before he reads it in front of a
live audience. That’s according to the playwright’s ‘rules’.
So when the
show’s producer, Davina Leonard came on stage with Mr Coulson and handed him
the sealed envelope with the script inside, the actor and the audience were
united. We were both being introduced to Soleimanpour’s unusual play at the
same time.
Yet it was
exhilarating to see how well Coulson handled his theatrical task. Juggling his
‘cold reading’, which involved him not only playing the Actor and occasionally,
the playwright’s voice, but also calling audience members on stage and giving
them absurd assignments to enact (like being a white rabbit running from a
bear!), Coulson kept his cool. He quickly got into the author’s witty, wily spirit
and did a brilliant job drawing his audience into this ingenious story line.
Gradually we
could see that this quirky play had multiple layers of meaning, hidden in
allegorical creatures who like Orwell’s Animal Farm, symbolized issues grappled
with by the author. They had to do with tyranny and want of free speech,
identity and alienation, and his own inability to leave his country due to red
tape and the State rule that obtaining a passport required two years mandatory
military service which the writer refused to do.
And so he
chose to write about ‘Rabbits’ as his way of getting word out that tyranny can
be cruel. He even toys with the notion of suicide as a means of coping.
But rather
than ‘White Rabbit Red Rabbit’ painting a dark, dreary picture, Soleimanpour’s
play entertains with the spontaneity of Mr Coulson and his delegated cast’s
making fun of themselves.
The only
truly stunning moment in the script comes towards the end when the writer
suggests the Actor has to actually gamble with life and death. Two water
glasses and a vial of poison on a table (with a chair and ladder) have been the
only props on an otherwise bare stage. And as one audience member had early on been
ordered to empty the poison into one of the two glasses, the text told Coulson
to drink from either one.
A key
indicator of how enthralled his audience was with the show on Saturday night
was when one woman jumped up just before Coulson chose a glass. She impulsively
grabbed both glasses and threw the water on the stage floor.
Her move was
unscripted but it showed how captivating was Coulson’s performance combined
with Soleimanpour’s mind game. In the end, the actor followed the script,
picked one glass and finally fell down flat on the floor.
Was he
‘dead’ or was it for the audience to decide? Ultimately, we can see why ‘White
Rabbit Red Rabbit has attracted so many great actors globally (and local ones
too, including John Sibi Okumu, Mumbi Kaigwa, Aleya Kassam, Maimouna Jallow and
Nick Reding, all of whom played the Actor last July).
Thanks to
Davina who brought the script to Kenya (courtesy of Aurora Nova) after seeing
it staged in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival three years ago.
Meanwhile,
Davina will give her own one-woman show this Sunday at 5pm at the National
Museum. She’ll re-stage ‘Every Brilliant Thing’ which like Soleimanpour’s has a
wonderfully interactive component.
Right after
her Sunday show, Mike Kudakwashe who’s been described as the ‘funniest man in
Harare’ will do his stand-up comedy set also at National Museum
Tomorrow
night Davina costars with Kevin Hanssen, Omwoma Mbogo and Mike Kudakwashe in a
slightly shortened version of Silvia Cassini’s ‘A Man Like You’ at Louis Leakey
Auditorium.
Finally,
this Sunday afternoon in Nanyuki, Martin Kigondu’s Prevail Arts Company will
perform Martin’s new play, ‘What Happens in the Night’ at Le Rustique
Restaurant from 3pm. The following weekend Prevail will perform the same drama
Saturday, October 7th at 5pm at Daystar University Valley Road.
Martin’s
cast includes Chichi Sei, Nick Ndeda, Shiviske Shivisi, Mourad Sadat and Salim
Gitao.
No comments:
Post a Comment