Review: AN OAK TREE, Young Vic Theatre
Photo credit: Pamela Raith
The Young Vic celebrates the 20th anniversary of Tim Crouch’s ‘groundbreaking’ play with a new production of An Oak Tree.
In a similar vein to Nassim Soleimanpour’s White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, which recently ran in the West End @sohoplace, each performance of An Oak Tree features a starry surprise performer, announced on the night. The press night audience were spoiled with the guest appearance of Jessie Buckley – decorated darling of stage and screen – and her baby bump, which gave a unique poignancy to this story of parental grief.
Writer, performer, and co-director Crouch is renowned for his inventive use of form, creating maverick pieces that are truly unique from performance to performance and often draw the audience in as active participants.
The framing conceit of An Oak Tree is a stage hypnotism show, where the hypnotist (Crouch) is surprised by the appearance of the father of young girl he killed in a car accident – played by the evening’s chosen surprise performer. Through this conceit, Crouch explores the blending of illusion and reality in theatre and life. And for anyone who has experienced the excruciating horror of a badly performed hypnotism show, Crouch’s stuttering and faltering performance at the top of the show is deliciously and devilishly familiar.
It’s certainly a unique approach to dissecting the experience of grief and loss, digging into the physical reality of death and the intangible, unfathomable emotions that accompany it. At one point, Crouch embodies the mother of the dead child, who is grounded in the physical reality of her daughter’s death, unable to understand and forgive her husband for his insistence that their daughter is still alive because he can still feel her presence in his emotions and his internal relationship with her. Through the microcosm of this grief-stricken family, Crouch gives a powerful case study in different ways of processing loss.
Unfortunately, this show errs on the side of patchy and doesn’t quite hang together. Crouch is a reassuring performer and onstage director – feeding lines to the guest performer, reacting and responding and gently reassuring when necessary. This form, though a playful and exciting concept, is ultimately jarring for a narrative like this that is so personal and intimate. The interruptions, changing over of scripts and line-feeding gets in the way of character development, which makes it hard to truly deliver the gut punch of grief that feels a bit dimmed in the performance.
That being said, Jessie Buckley was sublime. Her reading was extraordinarily sensitive and nuanced and she brought a measured sense of her own personality to the performance. She’s certainly set up a tough act to follow for the other featured guests.
An interesting experiment in form that posits some profound existential questions – an undoubtedly surprising and unique night of theatre.
*** Three stars
Reviewed by: Livvy Perrett
An Oak Tree plays at London’s Young Vic until 24 May, with further info here.
