Dirt

Out of sight and out of mind, dirt gathers on the fringes of our negligent society. We have become a race of freethinkers, free to think that problems exist peacefully outside the frontiers of our concern.

Playwright Robert Schneider’s dirt is an illegal immigrant from Basra who scrapes by in the shadows of the Western metropolis, peddling roses to urbanites who bashfully offer custom but not their respect. His story is told through a darkly compelling monologue anatomising the foreigner's painfully fiery sense of duty to admire the British civilisation from a distance. This is a man who has learned to hate himself to love us.

A humble set consisting of banal household items and the limited stage space contrast with a large, awesome performance from an actor with incredible natural charm and a precise grasp of his art. Winner of the Outstanding Actor Award at last year’s New York International Fringe Festival for his enchanting rendering of the play’s bittersweet hero, Christopher Domig fully delivers the weighty pathos he is charged with.

But it feels at times that the play wastes his talent with frivolous, ornamental sections which transform him from the deprived animal, struggling against the vile excesses of the West, into a daftly lyrical metaphor monkey, banging out the excesses of the English language like tambourine clashes.

Further adding to the intermittent fracas is a particularly rowdy production from a neighbouring venue that accents the sombre tones of Dirt with regular outbursts of amplified cheesy classics and wall-defying howling. While this is not a criticism of the play, it’s a highly distractive element to the experience that I can only hope will dissipate in future showings.