An Oak Tree by Tim Crouch
B Sharp in association with Ride On Productions
When playwright Tim Crouch premiered his play An Oak Tree in Edinburgh in 2005, it was quite a different beast to the one it is now.
Crouch, in the main role, played the hypnotist.
"An Oak Tree is a play for two actors," he wrote in The Guardian at the time. "I am one of them. Each night the second actor will change: for each performance I will be joined by an actor who has neither seen nor read the play they are about to be in. The story we will tell on stage will be as new to him or her as it is to the audience. This is the story of the play."
He would use unknown actors, actors he met in the street, actors he attracted through emailing a few random agents.
The actor, as they come up on stage in front of the audience, is informed that they will play the character of a father whose daughter has recently been killed in a car accident. I will leave the plot at that due to the nature of this show.
What is fascinating about this show is the way that the playwright/hypnotist (John Leary in this production) leads the actor through the plot. Not only does he give him/her hints and feed him/her lines, he plays out scenes with them and whispers instructions through an ear piece.
As a theatrical experiment it is utterly fascinating. The simple fact that heightened dramatic moments can be created with such simplicity and with one of two people having no idea what is going on is something refreshing.
As an audience, you become transfixed on how the volunteer on stage will react. Your awareness becomes heightened into the action-reaction elements of the drama. What will they do next? How will they portray the character? What will the hypnotist do next?
I was fortunate enough to see Leah Purcell on the opening night and Wayne Blair a week or so later. Of course, I didn't know who it was that was performing, but it was apparent after the show that I was in the minority, as Blair, Purcell and each of the other actors would have naturally brought their home crowd with them.
This makes director Tanya Goldberg's version of the piece more similar to Crouch's foray into America two years later with the piece;
"The producers placed an advert in Time Out New York every week, announcing which second actor was doing which night," he said in another Guardian article. "This was never meant to be the deal, and it came with a downside. It meant that audience turnout became a barometer of the success of each actor who did the show."
It was indeed something that I was constantly thinking about while watching the show. What would this be like if there was a complete unknown up there on stage? What if it wasn't Brendan Cowell or Claudia Karvan? What if we hadn't gone for the celebrity quota?
John Leary does a fantastic job as the playwright/hypnotist. But the only problem is that he is only half of the character and can't be the playwright. It may be a strange thing to say, but with this text it is so specific that I don't think that anyone other than the playwright can really fully play the role.
Even I as I re-read what I have typed, I find it hard to believe what I am saying. But this is the closest of anything that I have seen that is reality theatre. Central to that reality is that Tim Crouch has written the play and he will be performing as a hypnotist against someone who has never seen the script before.
It is Tim Crouch, rather than an actor John Leary who is in the words and the actions.
All this doesn't make it necessarily bad as it is actually a fascinating piece of theatre that is comical, tragic and moving. But the conceits that Crouch has employed only go as far as him doing it. But it is through the limitations that the fascination begins and theatre as an art form once again evolves and challenges.
B Sharp in association with Ride On Productions
When playwright Tim Crouch premiered his play An Oak Tree in Edinburgh in 2005, it was quite a different beast to the one it is now.
Crouch, in the main role, played the hypnotist.
"An Oak Tree is a play for two actors," he wrote in The Guardian at the time. "I am one of them. Each night the second actor will change: for each performance I will be joined by an actor who has neither seen nor read the play they are about to be in. The story we will tell on stage will be as new to him or her as it is to the audience. This is the story of the play."
He would use unknown actors, actors he met in the street, actors he attracted through emailing a few random agents.
The actor, as they come up on stage in front of the audience, is informed that they will play the character of a father whose daughter has recently been killed in a car accident. I will leave the plot at that due to the nature of this show.
What is fascinating about this show is the way that the playwright/hypnotist (John Leary in this production) leads the actor through the plot. Not only does he give him/her hints and feed him/her lines, he plays out scenes with them and whispers instructions through an ear piece.
As a theatrical experiment it is utterly fascinating. The simple fact that heightened dramatic moments can be created with such simplicity and with one of two people having no idea what is going on is something refreshing.
As an audience, you become transfixed on how the volunteer on stage will react. Your awareness becomes heightened into the action-reaction elements of the drama. What will they do next? How will they portray the character? What will the hypnotist do next?
I was fortunate enough to see Leah Purcell on the opening night and Wayne Blair a week or so later. Of course, I didn't know who it was that was performing, but it was apparent after the show that I was in the minority, as Blair, Purcell and each of the other actors would have naturally brought their home crowd with them.
This makes director Tanya Goldberg's version of the piece more similar to Crouch's foray into America two years later with the piece;
"The producers placed an advert in Time Out New York every week, announcing which second actor was doing which night," he said in another Guardian article. "This was never meant to be the deal, and it came with a downside. It meant that audience turnout became a barometer of the success of each actor who did the show."
It was indeed something that I was constantly thinking about while watching the show. What would this be like if there was a complete unknown up there on stage? What if it wasn't Brendan Cowell or Claudia Karvan? What if we hadn't gone for the celebrity quota?
John Leary does a fantastic job as the playwright/hypnotist. But the only problem is that he is only half of the character and can't be the playwright. It may be a strange thing to say, but with this text it is so specific that I don't think that anyone other than the playwright can really fully play the role.
Even I as I re-read what I have typed, I find it hard to believe what I am saying. But this is the closest of anything that I have seen that is reality theatre. Central to that reality is that Tim Crouch has written the play and he will be performing as a hypnotist against someone who has never seen the script before.
It is Tim Crouch, rather than an actor John Leary who is in the words and the actions.
All this doesn't make it necessarily bad as it is actually a fascinating piece of theatre that is comical, tragic and moving. But the conceits that Crouch has employed only go as far as him doing it. But it is through the limitations that the fascination begins and theatre as an art form once again evolves and challenges.
Directed by Tanya Goldberg Design by Xanthe Heubel Lighting by Verity Hampson Sound by Michael Toisuta Produced by Katherine Armstrong-Smith Starring John leary and a surprise guest each night.
Until August 10.
1 comments:
Come down and see it again at the Melbourne Festival in October to see Tim do the show himself. While you're here see his equally interesting 'England',
bp
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