Tim Crouch’s England (A Play for Galleries) explores a whole lot more than just theatre
As director and actor David Bernstein describes it, Tim Crouch’s England is a play that exists on the border of theatre and the conscious exploration of what theatre is. It doesn’t enforce the idea of performance, but rather strips it away as much as possible. In between telling a very classical story, the script challenges our conception of “a show.”
The writing deliberately dismisses the idea of performance, putting all the first act’s lines in the mouth (or mouths, as both actors play the part) of an art gallery tour guide who delivers the action as a second-hand description; the second act divorces things even more as the tour guide travels overseas and has to speak through an interpreter. The action of the play is not just that things go wrong in the unfolding story, but that things go wrong in the play and these are described, as when due of certain events an understudy is “forced” to take over. “Rather than showing, which is what theatre usually does, and talking about what they show… the play draws us in by not giving us much,” says Bernstein.
“It was a very unique performance on Friday,” said David Bernstein with a laugh. The slim, cheerful actor tells me about his bumpy opening night. “It’s supposed to be a meta-theatrical meltdown… but rather than doing quiet, strange things that hint at that, it sort of came apart a little bit.” Bernstein and his partner (the sunny, graceful Sierra Percy-Beauregard) seem elated with the content that his small mix-ups generate, as well as fascinated by thinking about the possibilities of theatre. It’s something you find in actors who really believe in the project they’re involved with. It’s also a passion you find in the young – both Bernstein and Percy-Beauregard are still in university.
Bernstein continues, “And not only are you leaving room for the audience to get it just using language, but the language itself is deliberately vague… The images are almost starkly minimal… The language comes back in cycles; there are repeated lines that come back in different ways. It’s structured in a way where language becomes sort of a choreography.” His most ardent praise for the play is an interesting one: “The playwright gets himself out of the way of the audience.” As a writer, I can think of few phrases more interesting.
England (A Play for Galleries)
by Tim Crouch
directed by David Bernstein
at Cube Gallery (1285 Wellington)
Regular tickets: $20
