Berlin-based Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour’s signature is cold-reads by a different, deliberately unprepared performer each night, so a sense of theatre-on-the-edge is almost guaranteed.

That, and renowned performers including Joyce DiDonato and Rory Kinnear, made his 2011 play White Rabbit, Red Rabbit an international hit. With his new work, ECHO: Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen, video technology adds to the edginess.

As does a degree of secrecy, so there’s much that’s better left unsaid here.

ECHO: Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen. Photo © Eugene Hyland

ECHO is a co-production by Nassim Soleimanpour Productions and several theatre companies around the world, including Melbourne’s Malthouse, Staatstheater Mainz, London’s Royal Court Theatre and Why Not Theatre in Toronto.

This internationality is a reflection of the work, which transports the audience from the place it’s being performed to Berlin and Iran.

An autobiographical meditation on the idea of home, ECHO also transports us through time. From the text’s existential prods to the striking finale enabled by technology, Soleimanpour reminds us we are “migrants in time”.

Unlike White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, for which the performer essentially stood in for Soleimanpour while he was detained in Iran, the affable playwright often appears via video...