DIRT To 15 August.
London.
DIRT
by Robert Schneider translated by Paul Dvorak.
Arcola Theatre (Arcola 2) 27 Arcola Street E8 2DJ To 15 August 2009.
Mon-Sat 8.15pm.
Runs 1hr 10min No interval.
TICKETS: 020 7503 1646.
www.arcolatheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 31 July.
Effortfully showing life isn’t all roses in another land..
‘Sad’, as he describes himself, is an illegal immigrant in the west, surviving as an unlicensed street-trader selling roses. So his monologue is up-to-the-minute in its subject. Yet Robert Schneider’s play dates from 1993 Austria, and it shows.
Partly because the challenges it throws out relate to anti-immigrant behaviour of the extreme Right in Austria at the time, partly because Schneider’s script now seems like a return to fundamentals in a debate that has moved on. Being Iraqi – not a Kurd – from Basra ‘Sad’ would today have brought more, and more recent, history with him.
The play works best as a portrait of the swirling division of conscience in the illegal trader, moving between defiance, warning, self-humiliation (hence the play’s title) and other contradictory emotions. But they are only rationally in contradiction with each other. In the hours of musing as a stranger passed and ignored by hundreds, or sleeping alone, talking to fellow-illegal Nabil, this is just the kind of fluid kaleidoscope of obsessive feelings that might occupy ‘Sad’s’ head.
His name’s in inverted commas because it might not be his name. He gives alternatives, and possibilities for its meaning, if any. Words, especially the English language, matter to ‘Sad’ – beside the roses, his only other possession is the best Arabic/English Dictionary he could find, bought as a priority on landing.
What limits the play is the way these promising ingredients are self-consciously constructed. The varied moods represent a whirl of feeling in his unstable position, but they come over with a playwright’s deliberate disposition of tones. And Christopher Domig’s performance, whilst technically accomplished and catching many moments acutely, cannot prevent these moods having little sense of reason in why they should change when they do, something that would give a sense of narrative in a piece where there are no external prompts to affect the sole character.
There’s an attempt to provide a sense of these in ‘Sad’s’ Ancient Mariner-like hooking of spectators with his eyes and sometimes in speech, and his wary looks sideways for trouble coming along. But for all his efforts Dirt remains earthbound.
Sad: Christopher Domig.
Director: David Robinson.
Designer: Daniel Domig.
2009-08-02 22:48:04