Tag: Nassim Soleimanpour

Echo (Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen) by Nassim Soleimanpour, Royal Court Theatre, 19 July 2024

To the Royal Court Theatre on a Friday evening. “Why Friday?”, I hear you cry. Because the Royal Court is now, in its wisdom, starting Saturday shows at 6:30, which is a bit early for us in the summer months, when we like to take advantage of the outdoors in daylight.

We fancied this, as we had seen one of Nassim’s previous works, the eponymous one…

Nassim by Nassim Soleimanpour, Bush Studio, 29 July 2017

…and loved it.

This sounded a bit more techie but a similar idea.

That’s exactly what it was.

When we booked it we had no idea who we were going to see. We discovered a week or so before our evening that our performer was to be Rebecca Lucy Taylor aka Self Esteem.

This is what she looks like when she does one of her more regular things – singing contemporary music:

It is hard to review a piece like this because I imagine every performer stamps their own mark on the piece – that is sort-of the idea. But certainly the evening we spent at The Royal Court was a gripping 80-90 minutes of theatre, using multi-media the way theatre can use multi-media best. It added to the live performance rather than making me wonder whether we should simply be at home watching a film.

Here is a link to the Royal Court resource on this piece, including a list of other performers involved.

It seems to have had mixed reviews, but then different reviewers saw different performers respond to the piece in different ways. Here’s a link to reviews.

We found it moving and thought-provoking. We’re very glad we went and we’re very glad we saw Self Esteem. We could have done without the screaming groupies, but you can’t have everything…or rather you can’t omit everything that you don’t want.

Nassim by Nassim Soleimanpour, Bush Studio, 29 July 2017

We loved this innovative, short piece.

It is described well, along with all the information you could possibly want, on the Bush site – here.

It is performed (alongside the author) by a different performer each night, who has not seen the script.  We got Phelim McDermott, who is one of the artistic directors of Improbable. He was very good.

The piece is, on the surface, very simple, childish even. Yet the more you think about it, the more you realise that Nassim is making profound points about freedom of speech, not least the pains people like him go through when they leave their home country (in his case Iran) in order to communicate what they have to say in a foreign place and a foreign language.

We sat right at the front but managed to avoid the worst elements of the audience participation. Having said that, I got the dirtiest of dirty looks from Phelim when I tried to help him follow his instructions, by pointing to an “X marks the spot” which was located next to my seat.

We weren’t just moved and thoughtful; we laughed a lot during the 70 minutes or so. Nassim is clearly a very innovative and skilled dramatist; we’ll certainly look out for his work again.

This Bush run is an Edinburgh preview – I think this piece will go down very well in Edinburgh. It is then returning to The Bush for a while after Edinburgh – I recommend that you grab a ticket for that while/if you still can, if you like this sort of thing.

Janie and I had a crazy craving for Iranian food after Nassim’s homesick piece, so decided to try Rice Chiswick, which we found very satisfactory. Not quite Mohsen’s standard, but close and very convenient for the Bush.

A splendid evening.