'An Oak Tree' review — Jessie Buckley and Tim Crouch rip up the theatrical rule book in this transformational show

Read our review of An Oak Tree, which features a different guest star every night, now in performances at the Young Vic to 24 May.

I defer to no one in my admiration for Tim Crouch, the maverick theatre-maker whose defining An Oak Tree has returned for a brief 20th-anniversary run at the Young Vic, reminding us afresh of this practitioner’s desire to rip up the rule book.

The two-hander, billed as 70 minutes or so but in fact capable of running quite a bit longer, pairs the wry, spry 61-year-old alongside a different performer every night – the fourth show in London in recent memory to take this approach, though one could argue, of course, that An Oak Tree got there first.

Tuesday’s opening performance pulled from the front row a visibly pregnant Jessie Buckley, the Olivier award-winning Sally Bowles from the ongoing Cabaret revival who has of course become a vaunted screen presence as well. Immediately likeable and always game, Buckley, it seemed, had been allowed a fairly general pre-show chat with Crouch but was otherwise coming fresh to the material and to her colleague’s way of working. (Others due to appear range from Russell Tovey to David Tennant, and any number of names in between.)

After some initial chivvying (“Good luck, you’ll be great” an ever-supportive Crouch told her), we were off, plunged anew into a story steeped in loss and grief but also in the very fact of transformation: a piano stool may not be what it seems, just as the (unseen) tree of the title comes to exhibit an elasticity that might pull even devotees of magical realism up short.

For a piece steeped in illusion, it makes sense that Crouch presents himself as a hypnotist, albeit one who is forever handing Buckley one or another clipboard and checking in to see if she is alright. The safe word should she decide to stop is “sleep”.

But one has to wonder whether Buckley would have agreed to this assignment had she known that the narrative tells of the inadvertent death at the hands of this very hypnotist of the young daughter of a 46-year-old, 6'2" man whom Buckley is asked to portray. Small wonder the always-endearing actress spent much of the performance caressing her belly: a life-enhancing antidote to the tale of woe with which she had been tasked.

One assumes the impact of the show will vary hugely from night to night, depending on the guest: I’d love to see what Sope Dirisu, unforgettable in the Almeida’s recent Rhinoceros, makes of this part. “Every word we speak is scripted, but otherwise,” Crouch informs the house, the unfinished sentence hinting at a range of responses as varied and unpredictable as life itself.

Indeed, it’s fascinating to think of An Oak Tree as an attempt to combat the certainty of performance – of lines and moves and characterisations that are in most cases learnt over time whereas Buckley has had the benefit of none of these. At one point, she becomes a piano player of apparent virtuosity, at others she succumbs to the giggles, those in turn allayed by remarks fed to her via an earpiece which she is then instructed to deliver to the house.

Having myself confronted grief twice over in recent weeks, I was more than ready for the cathartic potential of theatre to help cauterise such wounds. An Oak Tree doesn’t go down that road, devolving at times into glib abstractions as if playfulness were one way to keep things from getting too personal.

The show, to my mind anyway, doesn’t so much build to a natural climax as merely stop, as if the engine of invention is beginning to run down. It’s ingenious and agile throughout, to be sure, but was I moved in any particular way, or myself emotionally transformed? Not on this night with this guest, but on another occasion, who knows?

An Oak Tree is at the Young Vic to 24 May. Book An Oak Tree tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk.

Photo credit: An Oak Tree (Photos by Pamela Raith)