Review: An Oak Tree, The Other Palace Theatre

Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree has little in common with the oak of popular imagination. Where the tree is solid, enduring and dependable, the show is slippery, unpredictable and ambiguous. The actor who steps onto stage with Crouch – a different one each night of the run – is on uncertain ground, responding to instructions from Crouch that are delivered in a range of ways. It’s an exceptional showcase for the actor’s talent and tonight Gwyneth Keyworth rises to the challenge impressively, with hair-trigger responsiveness and an expressive face that reflects both the emotions of her characters and her own complicity with an audience that is discovering the show in time with her. 

Keyworth is not the only one playing parts; we, the audience, play the future audience of a pub hypnotism show, while Crouch plays the hypnotist. Except, sometimes Keyworth is just herself, and sometimes we’re just a 2026 audience at The Other Palace and sometimes Crouch is just Crouch, though hypnotist or not, he’s always the controller. There is a sequence in the show where the hypnotist dismisses participants from the stage, sending them back to their friends in the audience with a showman’s spiel and ritual tipping-over of their chairs. By the time the final participants are dismissed, there’s no spiel, but at the tipping over of the chairs the audience knows how to respond; we’ve learned our cue, we know what the director is expecting. 

The hypnotist’s story involves a young girl killed in a car accident, and the response of her parents to this loss. At times it is harrowing, and Crouch uses words powerfully to evoke the anticipation of grief and the moment of its impact. But then the show veers away from that scene and takes us back to the choreographed dance between Crouch and Keyworth. Like a hypnotist, Crouch plays with our emotions, and I feel like an unwilling participant. I resent the cynical exploitation of Claire, the dead girl, who is as underwritten as her sister because she only exists as a grief stimulant; her life reduced to the scene of her death, and a little piano music.  

There’s no doubt this show is clever, intricate and unlike anything else I’ve seen. It powerfully interrogates the dynamic between director and actor, the act of control and the act of submission, the power of the mind to heal, to anticipate, to resist. It would be instructive to see An Oak Tree more than once, to understand how much each guest actor’s responses determine the shape and tone of the show, or indeed how firmly the puppetmaster, Crouch, has his hands on the strings. But I probably won’t, for the same reason that I wouldn’t willingly submit to a hypnotist.  

Writer & Performer: Tim Crouch
Directors: Tim Crouch, Karl James, Andy Smith
Music: Peter Gill

An Oak Tree runs at the Other Palace until Sunday 15 November