This one-night stand with a celeb is heartening but ultimately a bit boring

EACH performance of this slippery metatheatrical experience features a different famous actor, unrehearsed and unprepared, interacting with the life story and the apparently live and recorded image of expat Iranian writer Nassim Soleimanpour.

- Nick Curtis

Jodie Whittaker, Nick Mohammed and Emilia Clarke are on the list; on opening night Adrian Lester, inset, was the guinea pig.

There’s novelty value and tenterhooks tension here. I hesitate to critique the poetic expression of the writer’s experience of oppression and displacement. Soleimanpour created his first play to travel when he couldn’t, and his “cold readings” have attracted star actors and international acclaim.