An Oak Tree (2008), Review

In an oak tree, writer / director Tim Crouch performs the story with a different actor in each show and this actor (in my case, Karen Tan) is someone who has never seen or read the play before she walks up on stage. Her performance onstage is guided by Crouch talking directly to her, through headphones that she is wearing or from lines of a script that she has been given there and then. It is easy to understand the acclaim Crouch has received because this truly innovative approach powerfully challenges our ideas of life and theatre, of lived reality and performed fiction. At the same time, however, I did find oak problematic: this inspired approach to staging could not deepen my experience of the unfolding drama about coping with loss because I found the script to be so over-written that I had difficulty actually caring about the story or characters. The play thus could only exist for me as a curio, a theatre experiment or exercise. In fact, the script even had the unfortunate effect of making the theatrical device I found so intriguing and thought-provoking at first, eventually seem contrived and manipulative instead. Some audience members found the play stimulating, others soporific – my experience oscillated between the two so the plays gets two and a half stars. All in all, a worthy play that even though I did not actually enjoy as an audience member, I'm still very glad I saw because of its interest value to me as a theatre enthusiast.