The Stage

England

Published Wednesday 13 May 2009 at 11:55 by Duska Radosavljevic

One of the hottest shows of the Edinburgh Fringe 2007, Tim Crouch’s creation has travelled 20 galleries and four continents to eventually return to its homeland - or its heartland, as the case may be.

Framed as a guided tour through a gallery exhibition, the performance takes us into a series of very private spaces, imagined settings and, ultimately, to a place where we are made to confront some of our own preconceptions and moral dilemmas. It is a piece about love, art and belonging, somewhat puzzlingly delivered in two voices - by Crouch and by Shunt’s Hannah Ringham - who take it in turns to portray the storyteller-survivor of a heart transplant operation.

As far as art exhibitions go, this experience enhanced by Dan Jones’ atmospheric score and a radio drama-like use of text must seem excitingly multifaceted, even though the actual content of the exhibition is entirely incidental to Crouch’s creation. As far as dramatic performance goes, the piece is graced by a thematically justified earnestness, a loving gaze coming from the actors, a rhythmic poetry of the delivery and - ‘horrible lighting’.

But the real drama lies in the final transaction where we are cast as a Muslim widow of a man whose heart now lies within our English storyteller. He has come to say thank you by trading art for a heart and is increasingly bewildered by the cultural gap and ‘our’ lack of understanding. Conceptually thrilling, but the question inevitably arises as to where this piece’s heart really is.