EDINBURGH FRINGE: An Oak Tree

If you want traditional theatre, this show is not for you.

But if you want to test the boundaries of make-believe well, with Tim Crouch there are no boundaries as he continues to explore new ways of entertaining an audience.

His Fringe offering last year, during which he was supposedly observing a production of King Lear through a virtual reality headset, won him loads of awards.

This year he’s reviving a 10-year-old show, and yet it still smacks of being experimental.

In An Oak Tree he plays a hypnotist who has killed a child and, each night he is using an unsuspecting actor to play the child’s grieving father.

The night I was there we were asked to believe that Nicole Cooper, last seen at the Lyceum as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (an undoing) was that father, although she has, Crouch tells us, neither seen nor read the script, having only met him an hour before. ‘The story is as new to Nicole as it is to you,’ he says.

Poor Nicole. As the time passes she is visually upset, tears pouring down her face, which led me to think, Is it her character who is crying; is she crying because of the story, or because of the way she has to work, being told what to do and how to move as the production progresses? It’s as much a mystery as the evening itself, but then Crouch demands of us that we think outside of the box.

It is a fascinating watch.

Image: Mihaela Bodlovic

An Oak Tree is at the Lyceum Studio until Aug 27 at 20.20 (I hr 10 mins). Tickets: www.lyceum.org.uk