A Persian rug gains value the more it is stepped on, playwright Nassim Soleimanpour explains, his face looming over us on a video call. The value of the ageing one on the Royal Court stage is about to rocket, as a new performer pads over it each night in this cosmic meditation on the shapeshifting meaning of borders and home.
Cheeky on screen and sincere in script, the Iranian playwright is known for his “cold read” performances which began when he was refused a passport. As he was unable to travel with his plays, other actors stepped into his shoes, reading a script they had never seen before. Tonight, Adrian Lester is our extension of Soleimanpour’s voice (later shows include Toby Jones, Meera Syal, Jodie Whittaker, Mawaan Rizwan and Kathryn Hunter), as the writer reckons with the possibility of never being able to return to his home country.
Reading from a screen and receiving instructions through an ear piece, Lester is bemused at first but quickly offers the gravitas the script desires. The role itself is fairly undemanding, a side character to Soleimanpour’s online presence, but its strength is as a symbol of the writer’s absence, a baton-passing of resistance.
Omar Elerian’s subtle direction and Derek Richards’ production design toy with time and space, providing a glimpse of what it is like to be pulled from one home to another. Borders fold in on themselves through tricksy video design, with an apparent live stream from Soleimanpour’s Berlin apartment tumbling us into an interrogation scene in Iran.
Later, the show zooms out, reaching for universal connection and covering Lester in stock-projections of the galaxy. But it is the individual, grounded intimacies that soften the distance between writer and performer: stories of Soleimanpour’s father during the Iranian revolution; his wife, Shirin, rolling her eyes at his bad jokes; the generous notion of the rug getting better the more it is shared. These fragile moments shuffle closest to Soleimanpour’s hopeful description of theatre as a time capsule, a way to hold on to people and the places we love even when we can’t do so in person.
• At the Royal Court, London, until 27 July
