My Arm by Tim Crouch
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Group: News From Nowhere (England)

Shirley Dent

You may expect a lot things when you read the synopsis of Tim Crouch's new play. 'At the age of ten, for want of anything more meaningful to do, I put arm above my head and kept it there. Now thirty years on, I'm so full of meaning it's killing me'.

What you don't get is a journey into the psyche of the disturbed - this is actually refused at every opportunity; or an angst ridden monologue on the agony of being different; or an angst ridden monologue on the agony of being different that tells us that putting your arm above your head is the expression of a beautiful soul and it's society's fault for not understanding.

What you do get is a story, a straight narrative of one man's life centred around a willful but pointless act. Tim Crouch understands narrative, he knows what words will pull us in and what silences will keep us there (there are some silences par excellence in this production). My Arm is to some extent an existential narrative: a pointless, childish action is observed by the now adult boy and the subsequent years described.

But it is also an engaged and engaging narrative: the action has consequences for the boy's social relations, starting with his family, and Tim Crouch describes these relations with a sure touch of sensitivity and humour that keeps the audience with him. Crucially, and this is absolutely crucial to the integrity of the thing, Crouch never even hints at standing in judgement on his subject matter.

Like all good narrators Crouch could teach the Edinburgh stand-ups a thing or two about timing. And like all good story writers, Crouch understands his subject matter intimately. The small world of childish insurrections is brought home with force by using an action man as the boy and peopling his world with inanimate objects gathered from the audience. A camera is trained onto the desktop world of the boy's childhood and these objects serve as stand-ins for Mums, Dads, brothers, social workers and friends. This may sound odd but it works.

Tim Crouch tells us a story of a life, which for all its existentialist potential is, at the end of the day, a story about a social life gone awry, a life with others in it. The last line literally brings this point home to you. And I for one was deeply moved by the small life just gone by.

31 July to 23 August.

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