Review: ECHO, Royal Court Theatre

Intricately weaving together a tapestry of different times and places, Nassim Soleimanpour’s ECHO is a feat of creative technology. Performed by a different celebrated actor each night, the performance offers a sharply intelligent take on immigration and national identity. 

In Soleimanpour’s trademark cold read style, the performers each become a proxy for the writer himself – on press night, it’s Adrian Lester, with other names including Fiona Shaw, Toby Jones, and Meera Syal. Each performer steps quite literally into Nassim’s shoes: putting on the same socks and sandals and standing on the same Persian carpet. The writer then appears larger than life on screen, seemingly on a live video call from Berlin.

With lagging wi-fi and awkward misunderstandings, the first few scenes are somewhat stressful to watch, bordering on worrying. Luckily, what starts off as a mundane chat between writer and performer gradually shifts into something else entirely. 

About a third into the show, both reality and realism begin to fade away. The exact location and time period of the events becomes murky, deliberately stranding both performer and audience in space and time. It’s impressively disorientating. From this moment on, ECHO comes into its own. We are taken on a journey both literal and figurative as Nassim navigates life as an Iranian immigrant in Berlin amidst his home country’s dangerous political climate. The casual, chatty nature of the show’s opening scenes make the sudden switch into scenes of interrogation and panic all the more jarring, and thus all the more effective. 

ECHO is also a real feat of modern stagecraft and technology. In the clever work of director Omar Elerian and designer/technologist Derek Richards, screens, videos, and projections create a series of illusions, stranding the actor in outer space and layering different memories over one another. In a theatrical climate over-saturated with camera work, ECHO offers some exciting originality. It’s rare for a show to be simultaneously so visually mesmerising and so intellectual. 

In many ways, ECHO is about as Royal Court as a show can get. It’s deliberately intelligent and experimental, arguably bordering on pretentious. The slippery approach to identity is reminiscent of Lucy Kirkwood’s That Is Not Who I Am/Rapture, while the interactive technology has a lot in common with Chris Thorpe’s Talking About the Fire. The casting choices reflect a contemporary fascination with the unprepared, recently seen in the Young Vic’s The Second Woman and Fringe hit work.txt. All of these references to say: for better or worse, this is very much a theatre show for theatre people. 

Perhaps the greatest strength and weakness of Soleimanpour’s creation is the fact that it doesn’t quite add up.  The video calls, sections of philosophical prose, and recreations of memories don't always gel together. There’s so much going on that it’s often difficult to follow, the pace is a little all over the place, and it leaves audiences in a state of confusion. Perhaps it’s too clever for its own good. Either way, ECHO is a masterful work of disorientation and exploration, and one that will leave you thinking for a very long time. 

ECHO runs at the Royal Court (Downstairs) until 27 July

Image Credits: Manuel Harlan
 

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