

Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
So often the found space or the broken down structure of a play or a stylised performance comes at the expense of a great story.
Not so with Tim Crouch’s absorbing - to the point of smothering - production. England is a gripping tale of a man or woman dying of heart disease and his or her eventual journey to an unnamed Islamic country to meet the widow of his or her eventual donor.
Potentially, gripping enough. But Crouch breaks apart the way the story is told - fracturing it, dividing one voice between the two performers and enveloping it in a claustrophobic soundscape from sound designer Dan Jones.
Both Crouch and Ringham narrate the first act, finishing each other’s sentences, picking up points where the other left off, pausing for inordinately lengthy periods of time in between, and all with a vacant smile - attending to the wrong details. It’s like a person with autism working as a gallery attendant or walking the audience through their life.
In the second act, they play the patient and a translator. Here, rather than the two actors portraying one character, the two characters speak with just one voice - the narrator, up to a point, merely repeating what the patient is saying. The effect is hypnotic.
England asks not only questions about the gulf between people, but also about the nature of storytelling, and suggests an intense answer.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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