England

Tim Crouch and Hannah Ringham welcome us to the Fruitmarket Gallery. It's a slightly stilted but sincere welcome, with a familiar ring to the ear of the regular gallery-goer. For 'England' is in some ways about art's ability to communicate, and very much about our individual and collective inability to do so.

Although Crouch's script is spare, lucid and everyday in its language, its density matches the complexity of Alex Hartley's images of the built and natural environments currently on the walls of the Fruitmarket Gallery. 'England', however, isn't site-specific as the term is usually understood, although setting is clearly crucial to the audience's experience

Crouch and Ringham share a character whose gender is never specified, and whose journey from health through illness and transplantation is as much about a faltering grope toward an appreciation of what 'the gift of life' may actually mean. Crouch's creation moves slowly from an unquestioning acceptance of a materially good life through puzzlement over what can be bought or possessed against its cost to others, materially, emotionally and / or spiritually. It's a dense and at times dark journey, experienced very much as two halves as actors and audience move from upper to lower level in the gallery space.

Language in 'England' is both a barrier to understanding and a desire to break down that barrier, a desire to possess and a wish for possession, art and talking about art frequently the context of that expression. The anonymous 'boyfriend' shared between the two actors becomes a means by which the pun 'appreciating art' is expressed - he deals in art, sees its value in material terms, in what status owning a Willem De Kooning places its possessor, rather than what the painting may say about the sensibilities of its owner.

This is tight acting of a very high order, giving expression to both the singular incommunicability of human experience and our individual and collective desire to break barriers. Within the second half of the play, this desire for communication becomes intrusion, as the character(s) seek out the family of the person from whom they have received a donor heart. Although this is very close to the core of the play, it felt less convincing to this reviewer. This may be due to personal experience of the practices of transplantation and thus a possibly overly-critical reaction to the notion of transplantee and donor family meeting, a more than rare occurrence.

Altogether, and despite that small cavail, a remarkable piece of theatre, deserving of time, attention and subsequent reflection.

Dates: 3 - 26 August

Times: 8pm, 3 - 26 August, plus additional perfomances at 10pm 10, 11, 17, 18, 21-26 August.