OBSERVER: Echo
In a short season at Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse, Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour’s latest play, Echo: Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen, challenged expectations of what theatre is.
Over seven nights, a new actor each night performed an unrehearsed, unseen script based on Nassim’s experiences in Iran which led him to flee into exile in Berlin.
Each actor had to follow the script as it was fed to them and also interact with the playwright himself via a video feed from Berlin. All done in real time in front of a live audience.
Thematically, the play was wide-ranging and explored such things as the notion of home, being in exile and the nature of reality.
It was almost too ambitious in its scope, as touching on so many profound ideas meant that the exploration of any one of them barely scratched the surface.
Also, the writing was uneven stylistically with passages of moving poetic language contrasting with tiresome cliched expressions.
Ben Lawson performed on the night attended. A challenging situation for any actor, Ben was at his best when relaxed and ad libbing. However, often he read rather than performed the text with his delivery consequently seeming wooden.
Omar Elerian directed the play. He did a great job of balancing the video feed, projected onto a screen, with the stage performance and interactions between the two. Some of the technical effects enabling actor and playwright to interact were amazing, but they tended to detract from the overall narrative.
If the intent was to distance the audience from being too emotionally involved in the story, a la Brechtian alienation, then it succeeded. However, this also confused because, at other times, the narrative was, by its very nature, emotionally driven given Nassim’s (and Iran’s) turbulent, often distressing story.
Not a complete success then due to these tensions pulling in opposite directions. Nevertheless, Echo is to be applauded as a bold and ambitious piece of theatre.
Review by Peter Murphy
Ben Lawson in Echo: Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen.
Photo: Eugene Hyland