An Oak Tree
07 May 2025
Young Vic Theatre
2.0 out of 5.0 stars
An Oak Tree, running at the Young Vic until the 24 May for its 20th anniversary run, is quite a theatrical experiment brought to the stage. Each night, a different actor who hasn’t seen the play and hasn’t read the script and generally doesn’t know what to expect, will join Tim Crouch on stage for this approximately 70 minute show, though length can vary greatly depending on the night’s actor.
Without giving too much away, the play is about grief and loss. A father loses his daughter in a car accident, the responsible driver is a stage hypnotist, when the two meet at a hypnotist show, emotions are tested. Through the heavy narrative, moments of humour provide much needed relief.
On our night, Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù was the surprise guest. Having recently seen his stellar work in Rhinoceros at the Almeida, it was an exciting moment when he was revealed to be that night’s grieving father. Interestingly, the guest actor is not provided with a full script, but mostly directed by Crouch on what to do and what to say. Being instructed on the basics of the character and the story, Dìrísù dives in head first, fully immersing himself in the character despite the vague description and lack of script to work with. First the most part, Crouch simply instructs the guest actor on what to say. Literally leaning towards them and saying “say yes” or “say no”, leading to a bit of an awkward dynamic between the two, with the guest left to guess where things are going and Crouch fully in control. The audible feeding of lines and directions is somewhat distracting, taking the audience out of the story and back to the theatre with every line, not allowing the story to fully unfold but rather keeping it firmly in the realm of an experimental staging without letting it evolve.
The foundation of the play, the story underneath the flashy layers, is an interesting, deeply emotional one. Unfortunately it is not allowed to breathe, breaking tension with continuous audible direction and Crouch’s incessant need to address the guest actor by name rather than the character, repetitively asking if they’re okay, distracting from the narrative. The emotional depth the two characters plunge to is clipped through these staging methods, leaving the audience to wonder if the play wants to be profound and devastating, or funny and dismissive. The guest actor seems under-utilised by not being given freedom to play with the character. There are occasional moments where the guest actor is handed a short script to work with, and these scenes definitely play the most genuine and touching, the most immersive and emotional. There is solid gold under the gimmick here, it’s just not given space to shine, dulling the impact of discussions of grief and loss to a side narrative and constantly drawing attention back to the actors instead of the characters.
Some odd choices are made by Tim Crouch in the way he treats the guest actor with almost a patronising air, leading to a disjointed production that lacks playfulness and impact.
