"England": Theater piece in Henry Art Gallery is eerie, provocative

Theater review |

Describing the theater piece "England" is tough. And surely the show's prime creator, Tim Crouch, wants it that way.

Crouch, an acclaimed British writer-performer, has brought the two-actor piece to Henry Art Gallery for a short run.

The Henry is trying out the idea of presenting more live performance. And "England," designed to tour to art galleries, is an apt first step.

The basics of this mainly verbal work: A man (Crouch) and a woman (Hannah Ringman), unisex-dressed and smiling, stride into Henry's Stroum Gallery (where an unrelated mixed-media show, "The Violet Hour," is on view).

As patrons stand and sit on the floor, the two tell a story — taking turns, overlapping, falling silent. They are relating, in modified Beckettian fashion, a single story between them via simple, vivid sentences, some of which come up again and again. Like: "You saved my life."

We hear a lot about "my boy friend," a successful art dealer who values art only by the price it fetches. We hear too about a cardiac condition so dire, the first-person narrator won't survive it without a heart transplant.

There's an eerie, ambiguous intensity in "England" that you can't quite put your finger on.

The piece can be abrasive, and its opaque quality frustrating — and fascinating. We never learn the gender of the person whose story this is. And narratively, "England" is rather like a china tea cup that's been smashed into small, sharp pieces. You have to reassemble it yourself.

The pieces include meticulous recitations of the history and geography of every locale mentioned (a cathedral, a hospital, the Henry). And the strongly specified nationality of every person in the tale — be they African, Lebanese, Dutch, American.

"England" concludes in the Henry's small auditorium, but takes a different slant there — in a direction that recalls Wallace Shawn's solo play about Western privilege and the Third World, "The Fever."

Suddenly there are three characters: the narrator, a translator and an angry widow — unseen, unheard but very much present. The latter persona shifts our sympathies dramatically, even if we have to imagine her. And her grief complicates what seemed simple earlier.

Sorry for the vagueness, but if you take in this unsettling, quietly provocative piece, you'll want to discover where it goes yourself. One might just say that "England" obliquely explores money in relation to life, life in relation to art, art is relation to money and life — all the fundamentals, from an ethically exacting but humane perspective.

Crouch reflects our globalized interconnectedness at its best and worst, its most life-enhancing and unjust. And he insists we ponder it, too.

Misha Berson:

mberson@seattletimes.com