On the flyer for his show Takes It To Heart, Hanna Shammas’ face appears almost deceptively familiar. With his curly hair and thick beard, he looks like the typical Jewish intellectual, perhaps even like the quietly reserved screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Yet Shammas is Palestinian, living in the 1948 territories, the areas of historic Palestine that became part of Israel after the establishment of the state in 1948, in the city of Haifa.

The title of his show, Takes It To Heart, refers to a medical condition he has had since birth: a hole in his heart. Framed around a hospital stay in which he discovers the condition, Shammas spends the hour wondering what might have caused the hole. Maybe it is because both Israel and Palestine think he is Jewish. Maybe it is because of his mother, of whom he needs to take care, or his sister, who is now Scottish. Maybe it is because he has three bank loans and no money. Or maybe it is simply because there is also a hole in his house. Indeed, who knows?

These questions allow Shammas to move between the personal and the political without turning either into a solemn lecture. His position as a Palestinian living in Haifa gives him privileges that Palestinians living in Gaza or the West Bank do not have, yet he repeatedly returns to the discomfort of occupying this comparatively privileged position. 

On stage, he repeatedly apologises for his English and sometimes stops to ask whether the audience understands his jokes. Rather than simply being a limitation, this becomes part of the texture of his performance: the hesitation, self-correction and occasional uncertainty sit alongside an easy, conversational delivery that makes his stories feel as though he is working them out with us in real time. The result is a show in which the uncertainty surrounding his identity, his health, and even his place on stage becomes part of the comedy.

What makes Takes It To Heart work is the way Shammas turns these contradictions into material. The hole in his heart becomes a way of asking what else might be broken: his family relationships, his finances, his identity, or perhaps the place he calls home. It is this mixture of self-deprecation and political unease that gives the hour its warmth without making its questions any less serious.

Hanna Schammas Takes It To Heart has finished its run