White Rabbit Red Rabbit NYC Reviews and Tickets

"A playful, enigmatic and haunting solo show...The play is a conversation among playwright, performer and audience, a conversation that, for all its diverting humor, takes on a gravity that prickles your skin...Some other passages slide perilously close to pretentiousness, and much is shrouded in obscurity and frisky quirkiness. But Mr. Soleimanpour’s elliptical play keeps taking odd, unexpected turns that often lead us back to the relief of laughter."
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"That such a work—politically fraught but stylistically passé—has wound up at the Westside Theatre is almost absurd in itself...The play itself is terribly earnest, filled with phrases like 'it tastes of freedom'...But if the dated style and lingo occasionally led Lane to roll his eyes or otherwise undermine the text, he was sometimes pulled up short by its power."
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"“It's extremely meta-theatrical, with the playwright often directly addressing the audience through his onstage messenger…Suffused with animal allegories — rabbits are not the only creatures who figure in the scenario — and macabre elements, the piece is ultimately too obscure and diffuse to have the desired impact…Ultimately, the show's main interest will come from the inevitably very different experiences offered by the varied performers."
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"'White Rabbit Red Rabbit' by Nassim Soleimanpour — a dazzling, transcendent piece of alive-and-kicking avant-garde theater — is performed by a different lead actor or actress every time it’s staged...Without discussing its many dazzling swings in tone, I’ll say that it is steeped in self-referencing and metaphorical tales about animals, and builds to several surprisingly emotional peaks about the shared experience of art."
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“The play requires just one actor, who has not seen the script before this performance…[Lane] is a master of the ad lib, and he was in top form, those drawbridge eyebrows and parenthetical smile lines animating his razor-sharp delivery...We are in allegory territory offering equivalent doses of comedy and moral observation…For reasons I can’t go into, the actor is denied that ultimate act of audience participation, a round of applause at the end. Lane deserved one, for sure."
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"Nassim Soleimanpour’s text is designed to accommodate any gender, race or age, which is how Nathan Lane could do the inaugural performance last week and I could see Whoopi Goldberg...Soleimanpour is Iranian, and he was in Tehran when he wrote 'White Rabbit Red Rabbit.' The show is clearly influenced by living in an authoritarian regime. It’s playful and often funny, but there’s a serious undertone—the rabbits are part of a lengthy allegory about peer pressure, obedience and repression."
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"'White Rabbit Red Rabbit' has reportedly been staged all over the world, and yet I suspect its success has more to do with star power than anything in the script. Fans of any of the names mentioned above may be entertained by spending an hour with one of their favorites in a rather novel context. But I fear that the author's intention travels very badly indeed."
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"Whether or not you’ll enjoy this play depends largely on your enthusiasm for allowing your mind to take a turn toward paranoia. Soleimanpour’s words lead viewers down some unlit alleys that are probably not particularly dangerous—until you consider that the playwright himself moves through such treacherous passages on a daily basis. It’s possible to laugh the whole thing off, but I found with surprise that my pulse quickened at certain moments."
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“The form that 'White Rabbit Red Rabbit' employs, in which the performer encounters a script cold, is not precisely a new technique…But Lane will never perform the show again, by design and perhaps also by choice...He did what was required of him, sometimes enthusiastically, sometimes reluctantly, always with charm. Perhaps a more earnest performer would have wrung more sincerity from the script, which is ultimately not perhaps as experimental or resonant as it wishes to be.”
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"As the rabbit tale extended, Soleimanpour turned it into a parable...I should only mention that many audience members seemed to be having a good time right up to the oddball conclusion. I decided that Soleimanpour risks becoming annoyingly specious when he attempts to incriminate us all regarding our lack of concern about oppressed peoples when we’re safe elsewhere. Yes, the producers’ request for review silence prohibits me from substantiating my claim, but there it is, all the same."
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"My advice to you is to go see someone you like. Someone who is a fairly good story =teller and can handle the spontaneity of interacting with the audience and reading at the same time...The message is confusing, but potent. The story is choppy and a bit messy and unfocused. But if you listen carefully you can really hear a young Iranian playwright vigorously trying to convey an important message through an unrehearsed actor on the stage with a little help from the audience."
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