Dirt

Fleeing personal tragedy on the other side of the world, Ada and her lover Martin go camping, hoping to get to know each other better. However, when the Outback starts seeping into the New Forest, and Ada’s dead mother turns up as an earwig, they discover the dangers of digging too deep into the past.

The script treads the line between surreal comedy and disturbing psychodrama. It’s frequently very funny but can be over-reliant on its humour, substituting narrative for running gags. Despite this, it’s an effective, refreshingly straightforward examination of how unearthing the past can drag us back down with it.

The cast are uniformly solid, if slightly prone to silly voices. This means they can struggle with shifts in tone, while Ada suffers from being the only ordinary person among grotesques. Nevertheless, by the end the cast and script are playing to each other’s strengths perfectly.

Special mention must be made of the puppetry, which goes a long way to establishing the play’s nightmarish tone. Like the rest of the production, it successfully twists the images of childhood into something degraded and rotten.

Confident, witty and memorable, this is impressive work from the young Airborne Theatre, the Leeds University Union Theatre group. More than that, Dirt is a mature and affecting approach to the past and people we try to bury.