The actor Adrian Lester looks relaxed and bemused as he waits on stage for the show he “hasn’t seen, read or rehearsed” to begin. An unidentified voice-over asks him, “Why did you agree to do it?” With a slight shrug, he replies, “I’ve no idea”.
The anonymous voice consoles him with the words, “remember, though other actors may replace you in this show, no one will replace you in my heart.”
This is whimsical, experimental theatre, heavy on technology, light on storytelling, taking us via a stage full of screens across time and to at least three countries with the charming smiles of the playwright, Nassim Soleimanpour, who occasionally gets Adrian to read some of his poetic, slightly mystical reflections on life.
Smiling on screen from his Berlin home, Nassim walks us around his study before popping into his kitchen to check “what we are cooking.” His wife, by the stove, corrects him with the words, “we are not cooking. You can do the dishes.”
With cosy banter, he takes us outside with his dog Echo to the brightly lit nightlife of people dining and chatting. To the edge of the screen, a theatre is advertising the show Echo.
Soon, Nassim is recalling memory fragments of childhood, his father's frustrations and his interview by a hostile official in Iran. He speaks of a classmate killed because he joined protests.
Nassim was in Iran during 2022 when protests were triggered by the killing of “the innocent” woman Mahsa Amini in the custody of the police. He explains that because he had suffered abuse, he didn’t feel able to join the protests.
Such things contribute to his sense of estrangement from the country of his birth and even his home in Berlin. Perhaps to illustrate that sense of isolation, we briefly shift to a landscape of ice and snow. He is alone with the single sign of life being a snowmobile in the distance that travels quickly towards him. Its driver, Lars, asks him what he is doing there before offering him a lift to a house where a young girl, without speaking, gives him a friendship bracelet.
None of this stretches the actor's skills. At each performance, a different actor will arrive to mostly watch like us the amiable screen ramble of Nassim through random memories. The play's purpose is as vague as its title, ECHO (Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen). It may simply remind you of that late night stuck in a pub next to some heavy-drinking bloke mystically pondering the meaning of the universe.
The show begins and ends with the following words on a huge screen: “We are whispers from the past fading into the future. We echo in the present.”