Opinionist: Under the Radar Festival

Playwright Tim Crouch's affecting play England is performed in the Chelsea Art Museum, where two pseudo-guides lead audience members on an hour-long tour through their personal trauma. Crouch and Hannah Ringham portray the guides, and begin the tour with a cheeky, wide-eyed enthusiasm for art, which they freely admit to knowing nothing about. But their boyfriend—Crouch and Ringham seem to represent a single character—is a collector, and they're much more comfortable talking about his relationship with art. What starts out whimsically soon takes a tragic turn, and the mood is only enhanced by Dan Jones's portentous, ambient sound design, which after thirty minutes erupts into a thunderous cacophony, as if the museum is collapsing in on itself. Escaping the din, the audience is escorted down to basement, where chairs (thank you!) await. The second half is marked by an unsettling narrative twist that might have been maudlin in lesser hands, but Crouch and Ringham have perfect pitch, and the final sixty seconds are utterly transporting. (Photo courtesy Martin Kaufhold.)