The play's second staging, as part of the 1923 show Le Cœur à barbe ("The Bearded Heart") and connected to an art manifesto of the same name as the latter, featured characteristic costumes designed by Sonia Delaunay.

[2][3] American literary historian David Graver, who compares The Gas Heart with Le Serin muet, a play by Tzara's friend Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, notes of the two texts that, together, they "pulverize the elements of conventional theater they use so finely that few gestures or remarks cohere in any recognizable order.

The entire exchange between them uses and reinterprets metaphors, proverbs and idiomatic speech, suggesting the generic roles traditionally assigned by folklore to the body parts in question, rather than situations involving the characters themselves, with lines uttered in such manner as to make the protagonists look obsessed.

In its third act, The Gas Heart also features a dance performed by a man fallen from a funnel, which, American critic Enoch Brater argues, shares characteristics with Alfred Jarry's ubuesque situations.

[10] Critic Michael Corvin also notes that the position of characters as specified by Tzara, alternating between an extreme height above the audience or episodes of collapsing on the stage, is a clue to how the protagonists relate to one another, and in particular to the tribulations of their love affairs.

[11] The cast included major figures of the Dada current: Tzara himself played the Eyebrow, with Philippe Soupault as the Ear, Théodore Fraenkel as the Nose, Benjamin Péret as the Neck, Louis Aragon as the Eye, and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes as the Mouth.

Breton, who objected to Tzara's style of performance art and the Dada excursion to Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, was also reportedly upset by the Romanian's refusal to take seriously the movement's informal prosecution of reactionary author Maurice Barrès.

[14] In reaction to this, Tzara issued the art manifesto The Bearded Heart, which was also signed by, among others, Péret, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Cocteau, Paul Éluard, Man Ray, Theo van Doesburg, Hans Arp, Vicente Huidobro, Ossip Zadkine, Erik Satie, Jean Metzinger, Paul Dermée, Serge Charchoune, Marcel Herrand, Clément Pansaers, Raymond Radiguet, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Cécile Sauvage, Léopold Survage, Marcelle Meyer, Emmanuel Fay, Ilia Zdanevich, Simon Mondzain, and Roch Grey.

The programme was a volatile hodge-podge of ex-Dada, pre-Dada and anti-Dada", while the audience, art critic Michel Sanouillet argued, comprised "gawkers and snobs [...] as well as artists and those in the know, who were attracted by the prospect of watching wolves devour each other.

[17] Whiting notes that controversy erupted when Soupault and Éluard found their writings "being read in the same events as those of Cocteau", and that no explanation was provided for presenting works by Auric, "in view of his alliance with Breton.

"[17] Also according to Hugnet, the actors could not run away because of their restricting costumes, while their attacker also managed to assault some of the writers present, punching René Crevel and breaking Pierre de Massot's arm with his walking stick.

[17] Although they had beforehand shown a measure of solidarity with Tzara, Péret and his fellow writer Éluard are reported to have helped Breton cause more disturbance, breaking several lamps before the Préfecture de Police forces could intervene.

[17] Hugnet recounts: "I can still hear the director of Théâtre Michel, tearing his hair at the sights of the rows of seats hanging loose or torn open and the devastated stage, and lamenting 'My lovely little theater!'

"[20] FitzGerald also recounts that, after breaking Massot's arm, Breton returned to his seat, that the audience was subsequently ready to assail him and his group, and that an actual brawl was averted only because "Tristan Tzara alerted the waiting police".