REVIEW: An Oak Tree, National Theatre ✭✭✭✭

Tim Crouch in An Oak Tree. Photo: Greg Veit An Oak Tree

Temporary Theatre, National Theatre

29 June 2015

4 Stars

What a difference a day makes.

It is a truth much overlooked that every performance of a theatrical work is different. The shape and feel might be the same night after night, but, humans being humans, small variations always occur depending upon energy, focus, health, and sundry other compounding factors. This can be good or bad, depending on the day you see the performance.

It is rare indeed that the point of a theatrical work is to be different every night. But that is exactly the premise of Tim Crouch's play, An Oak Tree, which is now playing at the National's Temporary Theatre. It's a tenth anniversary revival of the production, co-directed by Karl James and Andy Smith, and starring each night a different actor. Not just a different actor, but one who has, we are told, neither rehearsed nor seen the script.

The piece concerns a hypnotist (played by Crouch) who is doing his second-rate act at a pub, a year in the future, and who calls for and gets punters from the pub to come on stage to be hypnotised. All of the punters are imaginary, except the one played by the guest actor. The exchanges between the hypnotist and the guest actor make up the body of the play and centre around the guilt and loss the guest actor's character feels because of the sudden, unexpected death of his daughter, hit by a car as she foolishly stepped onto a roadway, not paying attention, headphones in.

To reveal more about the plot's twists and turns would be to entirely spoil the experience, not the least because one can see how different actors would, or could, bring to the fore different aspects of the situation by different emphases. Suffice to say that one is rewarded for paying careful attention to what is said and done.

At about 85 minutes the night I attended, Crouch's play is an interesting exercise. The presence of the guest actor defines the performance, and that actor's capacity to improvise and empathise with Crouch on short notice, as well as gain the confidence and sympathy of the audience, is vital.

So far in this run, the guest role has been taken by Conor Lovett, Maggie Service, Kate Duchêne, Philip Quast, Stephen Dillane and Naomi Wirthner. In the performance I saw, Samuel Barnett had the gig.

Barnett has a warmth and natural charm on stage which makes him easy to identify with and understand. Looking not a day older than when he first burst into prominence as Posner in The History Boys, Barnett was playing against type here: a much older married man, father of two, consumed with grief, hollow and disturbed. At the same time, the piece requires Barnett to be himself at times and his reactions to the unfolding text ring true. An infectious humour embraced his approach, making all the more potent the sequences where uncertainty, pain or anger were key. Affability and geniality made the anguish and remorse more profound – as well as serving to both distract and complement Crouch’s manipulation of the audience.

There is a lot of artifice here, expertly fused by Crouch into an inventive and (still) startlingly original piece of devised improvised theatre. Crouch wears the part of the shattered hypnotist like a well-loved glove and the effect of his performance is similar: familiar, slightly loose in parts, a little worn in others, but strangely comforting. He certainly knows what he is doing and with Barnett’s superb support, the key passages are confronting and engrossing.

Music is used to excellent effect, changing and shaping mood with ease. Some of the fiddling with sound equipment irritated at first, but once the pattern of behaviour is established it ceases to intrude and becomes part of the tawdry pub hypnosis routine. Crouch has really immersed himself into the world the audience imagines and the results are impressive.

Crouch delights in theatre which unsettles and pushes boundaries and An Oak Tree is no exception. In parts, it is brilliant and it is never less than compelling – at least, so it was when Burnett was the guest actor. On other days, it might be different – better, mostly the same or worse. The dynamics of the performers, usually honed in rehearsal, is here basically raw, and will either work or not. With Burnett and Crouch dancing this tarantella of guilt, grief and occasional guile, it’s a quirky, original and compelling exercise in the extremities of theatrical form.

Catch it if you can – and hope that your guest actor is as good as or better than Barnett.

An Oak Tree runs at the National Theatre until 15th July 2015