The first marvel in Daniel Kitson’s Tree is the tree itself, a fine structure built by Take 1 Scenic Services. Reaching almost the full height of the Old Vic, it is both simple and intricate: lollipop-shaped, as in a child’s drawing, with pale, wrinkled bark and abundant green leaves. The only thing on a bare stage, it is capacious enough to conceal whole bowers in its boughs.
What it actually conceals is a man. Bushy-haired, boiler-suited Kitson is, he says, living in the tree in order to stick up for arboreal rights. He does not want it to be pollarded. As he prowls along its branches, the layers of foliage become chambers of a residence and his improbable daily life is given concrete detail. He explains – what everyone asks first – what he does with his poo. He triple-bags it and lobs it into the rubbish van each week. He describes his entertainment. He uses binoculars to watch subtitled films on a friendly neighbour’s telly.
He is talking to a man who has arrived with a picnic. Tim Key is, so he says, a civil rights lawyer who has come for a tryst with a woman he hasn’t seen for years. He gives an account of their meeting, and then another, which slightly varies. Gradually the details of his conventional life begin to look less persuasive.
Apart from a dip in pressure two thirds of the way through, Tree twinkles from one quizzically comic exchange to another. Benignly but disconcertingly. Though every laugh depends on precision timing, the plot pivots on mistiming: Key’s character has failed to put his watch back so he has an hour to kill, or waste – or enhance. The dialogue moves not across the stage but up and down the tree. Instead of the usual tennis-match rallies, the exchanges are more like bungee jumps.
Light and quick, Tree seems at first to be all dapple and offshoots. Yet it has sturdy theatrical roots, illuminating what it is to tell stories, showing how much banter may hide even as it reveals.
