Tim Crouch's An Oak Tree or: How I Learned To Stop Caring and Just Watch

When I first booked tickets to see Tim Crouch's An Oak Tree at the National Theatre's Temporary space I didn't really know what I was going to see. I knew that Crouch wanted details of the piece to be kept deliberately secretive, and I knew that half of the cast changes every performance and hasn't read a word of the script until they step onto the stage in front of the audience. To be completely honest, my main reason for going was because I'd sat in front of Crouch when I saw Our Town at the Almeida Theatre last November and wanted to see him on stage.

I also knew that the cast was two people, including Crouch, and that the show was Kind of a Big Deal. It was Kind of a Big Deal in that this was the tenth anniversary revival after runs in London, New York and Los Angeles, and it was also Kind of a Big Deal because famous people have done it. People like Mike Meyers, Sophie Okendo and Frances McDormand. People that you tell your friends about over dinner. And tickets were £15, so even if it was awful, it was only £15 worth of awful.

So when we sat down in the theatre, the start of the show was indicated not by the dimming of the lights or a loud sound effect, but by Tim Crouch strolling onto the stage, completely out of character and saying hello, which we warily replied to.

"Hang on", I thought. "This is supposed to be experimental! Shouldn't he be contemporary dancing around the set to an unsettling ambient score, while we all try to figure what's actually going on? Maybe it'll start normal and get weirder."

I was wrong. An Oak Tree is a simple, raw piece of theatre. It's the complete antithesis of the stereotypical 'experimental' piece. There's no gimmicks. The other characters in the piece are played by white chairs. The script walks the line brilliantly between beautifully abstract and language so simple it could have been improvised on the spot.

But the thing that made me fall in love with An Oak Tree is that every performance is just so, so special. The inherently repetitious nature of theatre means that, even if you're in love with a production, you're always aware of the fact that what you're watching will happen again. And again. And again until closing night and then if the show gets a West End transfer the process just repeats itself.

Every performance of An Oak Tree, then is a completely individual performance. Even the cast lists could be seen as collectors items. I wondered why no programmes were being sold until I realised that it would be kind of of impossible to do so. On a side note though, I'd happily pay for a commemorative limited edition book on the play, a bit like what Punchdrunk just did with their book on The Drowned Man. It's this feeling of individuality which makes every performance of An Oak Tree so special. Because the second actor changes every performance, the bond between cast and audience ceases to exist after the cast take their bows. We can't look at pictures on the website to bring back memories, nor watch a trailer on Youtube. We just have in our heads what we saw with our eyes and listened to with our ears. I even felt my eyes getting a bit damp at one point, which has never happened to me in a theatre ever.

And as much I hate the word, An Oak Tree is defined by the metatheatrical. Crouch plays a hypnotist, who hypnotises a man whose daughter he killed in a car crash. But isn't that just theatre in itself? Aren't the actors on stage the magicians, and we the willing participants? We hand over our tickets, find our seats and wait to be amazed? The piece is so dense, so jam-packed with clues and puzzles that it would be impossible to analyse it in the theatre. You come to appreciate the language not for what it symbolizes, but for how it sounds. When Crouch halts the piece to ask the second actor how they're finding it, never have questions so mundane sounded so shattering. Even as the lines between author and performer start to blur, I've never felt so emotionally exposed as I was on that sunny Saturday afternoon in July. I've been wanting to write something about An Oak Tree since I first left the theatre, but words have just escaped. Only three weeks later can I speak about it in a vaguely coherent way.

Because, ultimately, An Oak Tree is a love letter to theatre. Crouch (who seems to know much more about theatre than any Oxbridge-educated director does) has constructed a tender, heartfelt piece about something which the government want to cut to oblivion. The play could be seen therefore as a piece of political protest, standing tall in the face of everything. But I think it's best to just appreciate An Oak Tree for what it is: two people transforming themselves before our very eyes, and as a result, the audience transforming with them.