An Oak Tree
Mesmerising
An Oak Tree
by Tim Crouch
Francesca Moody Productions at The Other Palace, Victoria until 15th November
Review by Claire Alexander
Could this be the future of theatre? At a time when audiences are dwindling, ageing, and less engaged with live theatre than ever before, in his play An Oak Tree, Tim Crouch invites a different actor on stage at each performance to perform without having seen the script or knowing very much, if anything, about how it is going to play out. It’s not a new idea – Red Rabbit, White Rabbit by Hassim Soleimanpour has been incredibly successful throughout the world creating live and spontaneous theatre while he remains trapped in Iran. Tim Crouch actually premiered An Oak Tree in 2005 and over 350 performers have shared the stage with him.
It makes for an unusual theatre experience and exposes actors, often more known for their work on film, to live theatre and generates an audience (probably a younger demographic judging from the performance I saw) of people who want to see their favourite screen actor, in a way traditional theatre often doesn’t. It forces the actor to fall back on their natural acting skills using powerful techniques they might have learned at drama school such as responding to being fed a text through a headpiece. No costumes to hide behind and a bare stage, and (in An Oak Tree) the confrontative strains of Carmina Burana.
It says of Tim Crouch, on his Wikipedia page, ‘Crouch has built a name for himself as one of British Drama’s great innovators with plays that have disturbed and challenged the passive theatrical experience’. In other words, he has a particular interest in breaking the boundaries of traditional theatre.
He certainly does this with his most recent piece An Oak Tree at The Other Palace in Victoria. Taking as its centre the idea of the actor playing the father, and Tim, a slightly unnerving stage hypnotist, it proves to be part comedy, part stage hypnotist show and part a moving and emotional narrative about two people dealing with the aftermath of a horrific accident. It makes for a slightly uncomfortable watch as the ‘script’ moves unpredictably between the three! My companion and I felt uneasy about the way in which it could have trivialised a tragic event. But theatre deals with tragedy and grief all the time so I wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe it was the perturbing way in which the grief seems to have been drawn out through stage hypnotism.
And what you get with a new unrehearsed performer every night is a constantly shifting relationship between Tim and actor; Tim and audience; actor and audience and audience and the show itself. Indeed the audience is encouraged to question, as Tim constantly breaks the fourth wall (in fact he doesn’t believe in fourth walls!), which of these relationships has primacy will shift constantly from night to night.
This is also an unusually challenging review to write because it carries the risk of more than the usual spoilers which will give away the secret of the evening for future audiences and, in fact, future actors (and there are some big names lined up to join Tim in this brave experiment over the next few weeks). Enough to say that there is some beautifully vivid description in the text, such as the way he describes through colour the visceral observations the father felt as he was told about the death of his daughter.
All credit to Gwyneth Keyworth (most recently known for her role in Death Valley) for being the brave soul to step up for the first performance of this run. She gave an honest and truthful performance as the father of the dead girl. She was probably more comfortable reading and responding to this character, than in the less clear parts of the script where the hypnotist was working his stage act, where I think I sensed an edge of discomfort (but that’s clever because you are uncomfortable when you are under hypnosis!).
Tim himself plays the hypnotist, but at times also the girl’s mother and himself. He has a disconcerting presence and is totally in control of his material. There is always a slightly unnerving charm to what he is doing.
If you want something that will be totally original every night and a glimpse of what could be the future of live theatre, book tickets to see your favourite actor and go. If a fulfilling theatrical experience is about a discussion afterwards about what you saw, it will certainly give you that.
Enough to say that the end where the hypnotist and the father finally make peace with their guilt in their different ways, is profound and thought provoking. But how did they get there? And, if it’s set in the future, could you go back and stop something awful happening? Go and see!
Claire Alexander, October 2026
Photography by Pamela Raith
