Three Oak Trees and a Forest

Tim Crouch, improvisation, and the art of letting go

For my birthday this year, I dragged a few curious friends to the Young Vic for Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree. A week later, I was back. Same play, entirely different experience. Sandwiched between those two trips, I watched a friend pretend to be a persecuted Frenchman in the room above a pub in Forest Hill. All three evenings centered on performance, improvisation, and surrender.

But before we get to this month’s double bill at the Young Vic, we need to rewind to my first trip to An Oak Tree, at the Edinburgh Festival in 2023.

While our tickets said they were for the Lyceum Theatre we were pointed across the road to an inconspicuous entrance between a pub and a Chinese restaurant. I’d seen one Tim Crouch play before (Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation) so I knew we were in for something special. As we headed up the stairs to an unassuming room, we were not fully prepared for what awaited us.

I’ve now seen Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree three times. It’s a play in which Crouch, as himself and/or a hypnotist, co-stars with a second actor, as themselves and/or a middle-aged father. Every night, the second actor is unannounced, unrehearsed, and uninhibited. They’re guided through the show by its author via whispered cues, verbal prompts, and printed scripts. On paper, it’s the same play every night. In practice, each performance is utterly unique.

That first time in Edinburgh, the second actor was Jessica Hardwick. In the role of the father she seemed incredibly vulnerable; every prompt, every description, landed visibly on her body. Crouch would describe the father’s shoes and she would shift hers in response. He’d mention her hands and her fingers would twitch to match. As she learned of her character’s recent history her face drooped in sorrow. It was like watching someone get moulded to life in front of your eyes.

My friend Mel sat next to me and, as is her way, was crying before too long. We had sat front row to avoid a bad rake, and it felt like we were right there with her. We got to hear some of the whispers from Crouch to Hardwick as she left her chair a few seats down from us, and went from audience member to star of the show. The thrill of An Oak Tree is not one of scale, but of intimacy. There, on the front row, you can see their emotions as they form on their face and watch as they flow through their body. You are watching an actor build a performance in real time.

“My expectations were fairly low and my anxiety was pretty high, given we were seeing it in a venue above a Chinese buffet. Sitting slap bang in the middle of the front row added to this anxiety, but within 30 seconds of the play starting, I would very happily have let Tim Crouch direct my actual life with his gentle yet firm tone.”

Mel on An Oak Tree

That first performance stayed with me. So when An Oak Tree returned to London this spring, I couldn’t resist revisiting it, twice, in the space of a week.

The first time I took two friends, James and Ania. One of them liked it. The other seemed less convinced. That’s the gamble of An Oak Tree. While the second actor navigates the play unrehearsed, they’re also constantly shifting between playing themselves and the father. Sometimes mid-sentence.

For me, this adds a thrill, as the audience and actor struggle to keep pace. But for others, this slippery nature can make the story at the heart of the play harder to track.

That night we were treated to Indira Varma in the role of the father. She also reacted physically as her character was revealed to her, hands flexing and shoulders adjusting as costume and physicalities are described to her. Varma’s performance had a lightness to it as she switched from Varma as Indira to Varma as the father. As herself she was playful, perhaps due to having work with Crouch before, but as the father she remained convincing; devastated, drained, and in need of help.

While Varma’s performance played with lightness and control, a week later Luke Thompson offered something altogether more intense and intimate.

I returned with another friend, Carla, and we were delighted to see Luke Thompson sitting on the front row with us, looking nervous but ready to climb on stage when prompted. His performance was different again; initially less physical, more internalised. He didn’t react physically to the character description so much as absorb it. But by the end of the show he had shouted through tears, physically shaken with anger and grief, and lay in the foetal position at the front of the stage.

Thompson in particular seemed to want to be engaged with the audience. For a monologue he chose to sit with his legs dangling over the front of the stage. I was in my natural place on the front row, and had to move my legs to make space for him. I haven’t been that close to someone monologuing through a breakdown since Bryan Cranston did something eerily similar to Mel and me in Network back in 2018.

Both nights felt electric. Both required a thorough debrief on the Elizabeth line, or over a swift pint in the Young Vic’s bar.

The repetition of seeing it three times has helped reveal the structure beneath. Even the off-script asides are tightly scripted. Crouch plays with the idea of control and freedom, never more so than when he says to the second actor:

Are you okay? Say ‘Yes’.

The script dictates their response and so, by definition, they must be okay.

And yet each time, it feels spontaneous. The second actor must follow the path laid out by Crouch, but they’re free to move, to pause, to laugh, to cry. The destination is fixed, but the route is theirs to choose.

Squeezed between my two Young Vic visits was another kind of live performance. Less structured, more chaotic, but just as rewarding.

Jessica Hardwick, Indira Varma, and Luke Thompson by Tim Crouch

On Wednesday evening, I headed to Forest Hill to see my friend Adam perform at a monthly improv night called The Forest. I was there in the role of supportive friend, climbing those stairs with the same trepidation I’d felt in EdinburghSitting there, watching a parade of talented troupes. I was there nice and early for the pre-show session, the jam, in which Adam was flexing his improv chops before he joined me in the audience for the full show.

Sitting there, watching a parade of talented troupes spin laughs out of thin air, I couldn’t help thinking back to An Oak Tree. Not only was I sitting in the setting of the play, but once again I was watching a performer throw caution to the wind and embrace uncertainty. This time there was no script to rely on and instead of seeking emotional truth, these performers had a more daunting task; making me laugh.

In improv the actors have maximum freedom but still perform within set boundaries. The jam Adam was performing in requires participants to have at least level three training - improv is chaos but it has rules to contain it. And instead of the lovely Tim Crouch the teams only have each other to rely on. When someone stumbles they have the support of those on-stage who will step in to assist or distract, and when something unexpected happens it gets absorbed, enhanced, and played with.

What united all three nights spent with Tim Crouch, Indira Varma, Luke Thompson, and Adam, was a shared exposure through performance.

At The Young Vic and The Signal Pub I had the privilege of watching performers make choices in the moment. Both shows rely on vulnerability, on risk, and complete lack of control. One might have a script, the other definitely doesn’t, but both had performers walking a tightrope between the person who walked into the space, and the role they had to inhabit.

This is why I love the theatre. Whether there’s a script or not, the best performers walk into the unknown and build something live, right in front of us.

Father: I don’t know if I’m allowed to ask this…

Hypnotist: Go on.

Father: How free am I?

Hypnotist: Every word we speak is scripted but otherwise…

An Oak Tree runs at the Young Vic until 24th May 2025.

For more on Tim Crouch please take a look at Café Europa’s Substack on 20 Years of An Oak Tree, and Exeunt on the line between his work for children and for adults.