Wednesday, October 21

Tag: An Oak Tree

An Oak Tree – The Other Palace
London

An Oak Tree – The Other Palace

Tim Crouch’s interesting spectacle is back after a fiercely popular run at the Young Vic last year. Now placed at The Other Palace main theatre and the performance is led by Tim Crouch himself and a different second performer every night. On this evening, we had the wonderful Gwyneth Keyworth. The script doesn’t change but in essence the performance will, having a different actor every night who is unaware of the script or the journey that their character will take. Crouch leads this second performer into the abyss with small scripts on clipboards, headphones linked to his microphone or at some points leading them with ‘now you say…’. This journey follows a father coming to a hypnotist’s (Crouch) failing show to confront him as he accidentally killed his daughter. Through this jo...
An Oak Tree – Lyceum Studio
Scotland

An Oak Tree – Lyceum Studio

Tim Crouch’s fiercely respected set-less, rehearsal-less, prop-less look at how we interact with one another is the most complicated piece of theatre I’ve ever seen. The basic premise is so simple – a hypnotist invites a volunteer on stage – but in only an hour you are tangled up in a precision bit of chaos that is impossible to get out of. And you can’t even go back to make sense of what you saw with a re-watch, because the nature of the play means that each performance is completely unique.  This isn’t just because Crouch stars opposite a different actor each night. It’s because each new actor has never read the script or seen the play for themselves before – Crouch simply introduces them to the audience, explains what will happen, makes it clear that they can stop at any time, and ...