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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Lyn Gardner

England

One of the edgiest moments in Tim Crouch's latest show, another of his intriguing experimental adventures in theatre, comes near the end. A year after she received the heart transplant that saved her life, a woman goes to a developing country to visit the man's widow. She comes, bearing gifts, to say thank you. But language fails and, through the faltering intervention of the interpreter and a myriad of cultural confusions, it emerges that what took place was not just a transplant but also a transaction.

For some years now, Crouch has been approaching theatre as if it were conceptual art. England is the logical conclusion of that: a theatre piece that takes place in an art gallery. It is a show about transplants and transactions, but most of all it is about the value we put on life and each other, and the human tragedies that occur when we deal across borders and fail to recognise the real beauty and worth of things.

In England, the woman's boyfriend is an art dealer - American by birth, Dutch by origin, international by nature - who flies around the world buying and selling art for other people. "He says that good art is art that sells," the woman, played by Hannah Ringham, blithely tells us. But what happens when you start putting a price tag on everything? A picture, love, even a heart?

England is cool in temperature, and it lacks the emotional generosity of Crouch's other shows; for me, it felt too bound up in its own conceit to really reach out and touch my heart. But it is never dull. And, like all Crouch's shows, it burns with the desire to provoke as it explores not just the nature of theatre but the way we live now, in a world where commerce knows no borders.

· Until August 26. Box office: 0131-228 1404.

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