On the night of Wednesday, April 1, 2026, at approximately 7:30 p.m. CDT, myself and about 34 other people saw a production by About Time Theatre of White Rabbit Red Rabbit at the xBk Annex, as performed by Mary Bricker. It was, I imagine, a different show than what a largely different audience saw the subsequent night. It was also, as I came to see it, a restatement of intent from Des Moines’ newest theater company, an intent that seeks to interrogate their art form. Let me explain…
The implicit demand of traditional theater is that it be done correctly.
There is, after all, a script with words and stage directions that must be performed. Yet, the tension of seeing a live show involves the possibility that words and actions and entrances might be missed.
So a question we could ask is; even when perfectly performed, when has one truly seen the production of a theater show?
If a friend invites me to see a touring production of Waitress, I might refuse and say I’ve already seen a production of it at the local community theater.
Even assuming everything is executed perfectly in these respective productions, they are different shows. Both of them led by different directors and happening on different stages with different actors. The only real unifying force between these two shows (without getting too in the weeds with show style-guides and similar stipulations) is the script — which has been carefully studied and understood by all the production’s participants so that they might do the show correctly.
If you know anything about White Rabbit Red Rabbit — the latest unconventional production from Des Moines’ About Time Theater Company — you see where I’m going with this.
White Rabbit Red Rabbit’s correct conditions require just a handful of things: two cups of water, a vial of (possibly) poison, a legible script for White Rabbit Red Rabbit, and an actor who has never read the show’s script or seen any previous production.
It is an exceptionally hard show to write a review of, as a literal “re-viewing” would be an examination of a different object. Like going to see Michelangelo’s David one evening, and attempting to write about it knowing that audiences might see Verrocchio’s David or Donatello’s David or another David entirely the next night.
This is a feature, not a bug of this hour-long show from Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour.
Soleimanpour and his script unified About Time’s six performances in the first days of April, in the same way the music of Sara Bareilles unifies productions of Waitress, or as artistic traditions and the biblical hero David unifies Renaissance sculptors rendering the Hebrew hero.
Soleimanpour understands this and packs his script with a variety of themes and tones for actors to lean into. Ideas of power, persecution, suicide, inevitability, free will, complicity, agency and more fill the script, which oscillates between explicate explanations and anecdotes, fables and hypotheticals.
About Time’s current season continues with two more shows: Gutenberg! The Musical this June and Building the Wall in late September/early October. Having arrived ahead of these, White Rabbit Red Rabbit is a restating of intent from Des Moines’ About Time Theater Company, “producing innovative and socially relevant theater.”
About Time aims to be socially relevant and innovative, yes — but I think the troupe also wants to interrogate their art form. They actor-run company wants audiences to walk away from the show talking not just about the show and the performances, but the idea of theater. They want audiences to avoid watching a show passively and put on work that actively engages.
If you have any inclination for the weirder or even slightly fringe pockets of modern theater, then I absolutely recommend you check out the first production from About Time Theater that piques your interest.
Isaac Hamlet has, at various points, been an arts & entertainment reporter and editor based in Iowa City and Des Moines. He also writes fantasy books under the pseudonym R.E. Bellesmith.
