While waiting outside the tiny black box theater Under St. Marks, I was approached by a young man of indiscriminate ethnic origin who wanted to sell me a rose for three dollars. I thought, "Is this guy a plant?" Having seen Dirt, Robert Schneider's bleak yet strangely compelling show at last summer's Fringe Festival, I thought I was on to some savvy marketing. You see Dirt robustly translated from the German by Paul Dvorak has as its only character, Sad (short for Saddam) a Middle Eastern rose peddler in a large urban city.

Sad is an illegal Iraqi immigrant who despite his lack of gainful employment is both intelligent and articulate. He takes great pride in his self-taught English (one of his most valued possessions is his Thesaurus). Coming from the swamps of war-torn Basra (via Sweden), the 30ish Sad has tried with great effort to ingratiate himself into American culture almost to the point of servitude. He refuses to sit on park benches because he is unworthy; he loves the smell of ammonia because it reminds him of how unclean he is; he approaches his flower customers with the utmost respect and humility for their generosity. As the play progresses, we slowly see Sad's low self-esteem is really a form of acute passive aggressiveness; an intense reverse prejudice. For all his professed love for this country and its traditions, he hates his cultural separation (he constantly references a wrinkled family photo; he tells us his first English word was Kodak). His identity becomes so convoluted that he starts changing his name to please, "My name is Hassan" or to possibly confuse. The latent racism that is the template of American culture is turned inward to the point of masochism; his self-loathing becomes a form of psychological suicide ("I'm a piece of shit" he bemoans several times throughout). While not in Sad's case, it is the temperament that produces suicide bombers.

It's a hard piece to sit through; as we confront our own part in the lack of empathy or even awareness that Sad feels (how often have we dismissed the annoying rose peddler in a restaurant?). Fortunately we have the gifted Christopher Domig's prickly performance as Sad to keep the evening from sinking into utter despair. Having won a performance award at last summer's Fringe, he has grown more assured and nuanced in his portrayal. It a tough role to find a balance for yet Domig's admirably wins our sympathies without lessening our nausea. Under St Marks becomes suitably unwelcoming as Sad's basement apartment and Greg Brostrom's lighting in unrelenting in its austerity. The show ends with a soundscape of city noises mixed with the reverberations of war and as I leave the theater the pre-show rose peddler is no where to be seen.

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