Sohrab Haghverdi says he wants to be liked. I’m not so sure. Would a needy actor be willing to try the audience’s patience by coughing and coughing, then coughing some more? Would they push their way through a hole in a Persian rug, while shouting about snakes and balancing empty suitcases on their head? Or wander off stage at random?
No – this is a man who takes pleasure in winding us up. Whether it is collecting his own bodily fluids or launching into a splenetic rant in favour of Trump’s bombing of Iran, he has no interest in giving us an easy ride. This is punk theatre: irritating and brash.
Yet Haghverdi can also be endearing. Foriegner – the misspelling is intentional – is billed as an “anti-comedy clown show” and, anti-comedy or not, it is frequently very funny.
The US-based Iranian performer claims to have been misunderstood as a linear storyteller and equally misunderstood as creating “crazy” theatre, so is opting instead to do both at the same time. The result is a destabilising amalgam of meta-theatrical games, flashes of autobiographical insight and political provocation.
Sperm and urine are the recurring symbols. He claims that drinking his own piss will put him in line for an O-1B US visa for virtuoso artistic talent, an ironic conceit that would be hilariously subversive if true. But perhaps the connecting thread is the philosophy of Rumi, the 13th-century mystic who called for people to kill their false self in order to live truly.
A show that is both wayward and intentional seems hellbent on destroying itself from within. Haghverdi does not want to be labelled as an Iranian, still less a minority; he resists being boxed in by his directors (Benjamin and Mason Rosenthal), and resents entertaining us even as he does so. His quest for perpetual reinvention leads to a Marmite show that is equal parts perplexing and delightful.
• At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 31 August
