an oak tree

an oak tree, at the Barrow Street theater, was refreshing in its experimentation.

The basic story line of an oak tree is that a somewhat professional hypnotist has hit a young girl with his car and killed her. The father of the young girl shows up unexpectedly one evening at a pub where the hypnotist is performing his routine and ends up on stage for a low-key confrontation where both men reveal the ways the accident has changed their lives over the past year.

The play is based on the idea of self-actualization where if you tell yourself something enough you will actually begin to believe it as truth and to actualize it in life.

Now, for the gimmick: the part of the father is played by a different actor every night. The actor can be either female or male. And, they have not seen the play nor read the script. This also comes with the caveat that with these conditions, the part is not improvisational. The actor is given very specific prompts, cues, some script and instruction throughout the play. It sounds like improv, but it’s not? How strange, you say.

As a viewer, the gimmick works surprisingly well with the story line and the basis of the play. In this play about loss and grief, the inclusion of a hypnotist helps connect the dots between the two. The actor transforms in front of the audiences’ eyes from stranger to the father of a child who tragically died. In short, the actor becomes believable and actualizes the role through being told very specifically what to do.

I think whether the play is touching or not, moves you or not, depends to a great degree on the father actor each night. I attended when Alan Ruck (the eternally good-natured-no matter how hard he may try to shed the image-Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) played the father and he brought a gentle, good-natured element to the role, but not tragic.

an oak tree was intellectually satisfying. I think there is a chance it was smarter than the playwright because it worked on more levels than could have even been intended. I think it could be a study in free will vs. a directed, foretold fate, for instance. Also, the permutations the play was able to withstand at the hands of so many actors elevated it and attested to its structure and its intention. It would be interesting to see if any other actor could convincingly carry off the role of the hypnotist—as the hypnotist actor was also the playwright and had a firm idea of intention and exactly what direction he hoped the play would move in each night (in addition to a great amount of self-interest in seeing it carried off successfully).

Overall, I would recommend an oak tree.
I would recommend it to people who like experimental theater, who don’t mind dramas, and have the patience to watch this play unfold, because it did take patience. Anyone who gets lost watching flashbacks in a movie probably will not walk away happy at the end of the night.