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Tim Crouch: Plays One
This new collection pulls together, for the first time, the finest work from award-winning English dramatist Tim Crouch. Includes The Author , joint winner of the 2010 John Whiting Award and winner of a Total Theatre award for innovation; England ; An Oak Tree , winner of a Village Voice Obie; and My Arm
334 pages, Paperback
First published April 10, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 3, 2025
Read this on the train to my one day trip to Rasht
گایز!
من تازه فهمیدم که بعد ۳۰ هم همینه. تقریبا هیچکس هیچایدهای نداره برنامه چیه:)
گایز!
من تازه فهمیدم که بعد ۳۰ هم همینه. تقریبا هیچکس هیچایدهای نداره برنامه چیه:)
August 24, 2022
I didn’t see the plays performed and only read My Arm & An Oak Tree.
My Arm: I felt the foreword describes really well Tim Crouch’s strength as a playwright. He has a knack for including the audience in the play experience. The play uses inanimate objects to represent the people and things, and the audience is left to imagine the story as the protagonist struggles with mental health and compulsive behaviors. I was surprised by the impact this had on me-as I found even imagining the arm was very disturbing (decaying, finder nails falling off). The audience can be as creative and imaginative as they want, and this really propels the “imaginative engagement” of the play.
This play connects the themes of compulsion, obsession, and mental illness with a critique on the human desire to make “other” what is grotesque. The other characters in the play are more interested in making the protagonist into art, a spectacle, a commodity, instead of trying to help him while he was alive. They were only interested in him as an object (art sealed behind glass) and less in his humanity. They were more interested in buying his body once he was dead. He was seen as alien, not human, and only his brother acts with love and compassion. The last image of the play highlights this; we see the protagonist as a child hugging his brother, the only person in his life that saw him as more than just his arm. In my opinion this play was depressing, but a hauntingly accurate depiction of the human tendency to avoid the humanity of other people suffering with mental illnesses.
An Oak Tree: In this play, a member of the audience acts as the role of the grieving “father” and follows instructions (both known and unknown to the audience) depicting the complexity of grief and the aftermath of the tragedy of losing a child.
I read reviews of this play and almost all positive; applauding Crouch’s ability to engage an audience member into the play and pulling back the curtain to the audience to how theatre is made. I thought for what it was, it was done well, as an audience member/reader you put yourself in the father’s shoes, as that just as easily could’ve been you on stage. However, I felt the hypnotist to be distracting, as I don’t feel the layer of “hypnotizing” the father to add much to the play. I felt it added an unneeded layer of complexity to the story, as the other actor (“hypnotist”) could have acted as the wife, daughter, friend, and the message of the play would have just as easily been understood. Seeing this play in person probably would have been better than reading it. Nonetheless, the way the themes of grief and empathy were portrayed and the interplay between reality and fiction made the play worth reading.
My Arm: I felt the foreword describes really well Tim Crouch’s strength as a playwright. He has a knack for including the audience in the play experience. The play uses inanimate objects to represent the people and things, and the audience is left to imagine the story as the protagonist struggles with mental health and compulsive behaviors. I was surprised by the impact this had on me-as I found even imagining the arm was very disturbing (decaying, finder nails falling off). The audience can be as creative and imaginative as they want, and this really propels the “imaginative engagement” of the play.
This play connects the themes of compulsion, obsession, and mental illness with a critique on the human desire to make “other” what is grotesque. The other characters in the play are more interested in making the protagonist into art, a spectacle, a commodity, instead of trying to help him while he was alive. They were only interested in him as an object (art sealed behind glass) and less in his humanity. They were more interested in buying his body once he was dead. He was seen as alien, not human, and only his brother acts with love and compassion. The last image of the play highlights this; we see the protagonist as a child hugging his brother, the only person in his life that saw him as more than just his arm. In my opinion this play was depressing, but a hauntingly accurate depiction of the human tendency to avoid the humanity of other people suffering with mental illnesses.
An Oak Tree: In this play, a member of the audience acts as the role of the grieving “father” and follows instructions (both known and unknown to the audience) depicting the complexity of grief and the aftermath of the tragedy of losing a child.
I read reviews of this play and almost all positive; applauding Crouch’s ability to engage an audience member into the play and pulling back the curtain to the audience to how theatre is made. I thought for what it was, it was done well, as an audience member/reader you put yourself in the father’s shoes, as that just as easily could’ve been you on stage. However, I felt the hypnotist to be distracting, as I don’t feel the layer of “hypnotizing” the father to add much to the play. I felt it added an unneeded layer of complexity to the story, as the other actor (“hypnotist”) could have acted as the wife, daughter, friend, and the message of the play would have just as easily been understood. Seeing this play in person probably would have been better than reading it. Nonetheless, the way the themes of grief and empathy were portrayed and the interplay between reality and fiction made the play worth reading.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 17, 2021
My Arm: 4/5
An Oak Tree: 5/5
ENGLAND: 3/5
The Author: 3.5/5
An Oak Tree: 5/5
ENGLAND: 3/5
The Author: 3.5/5
August 4, 2025
My Arm (4/5)
An Oak Tree (5/5)
England (3/5)
The Author (4/5)
An Oak Tree (5/5)
England (3/5)
The Author (4/5)
September 4, 2023
Fascinating read.
Pushing and questioning the nature, meaning and experience of performance.
Pushing and questioning the nature, meaning and experience of performance.
January 19, 2014
The foreword to this book does a better job of explaining why Tim Crouch is possibly the first great new playwright of the 21st Century, so I'll point you towards that. I was fortunate enough to see My Arm at the Edinburgh Fringe, and An Oak Tree the following year. In both cases Crouch had created pieces that experimented with the theatrical form in a original and fascinating way, but not so that the pieces became what might be stereotypically considered 'experimental' or 'difficult'. In fact quite the opposite; An Oak Tree, for example, is mesmerising in performance, using as it does a second performer who has never seen or read the play. Not only is this a marvel to watch, as Crouch's 'hypnotist' persona performs the spellbinding trick of coaxing a non-actor into delivering a performance, but it ties in so brilliantly into the subject and themes of the play itself.
Of course that's me talking about having seen it in performance, and for me reading the play is merely a way of re-capturing what I saw, so I can't entirely speak for how it reads as a script. My Arm, however, stands up very well simply as a monologue, even without the trick of using borrowed objects from the audience in the place of characters - again, I will point you to the foreword to explain why this is such a brilliant staging device, all I can say is that in performance it totally works. The other two plays in this volume - ENGLAND and The Author - I did not get to see in performance, so I have only read them in this book, and they appear to stand up pretty well nonetheless. I'd say that ENGLAND probably loses the most in transition to page as you can't really capture the effect of the lines alternating between the two performers, nor the sound design described in the script, but in both cases there's still a clear narrative and the questions raised by the pieces are apparent.
These plays aren't really likely to be performed by other companies as they're quite specific to the persona of the author I think - although I believe An Oak Tree has been performed around the world - so reading these is probably your only way to experience these plays now. Although I do think that Crouch is one of the best current playwrights about, he's not as well known as he should be because his work is very much geared towards fringe venues and hence doesn't reach wide audiences. I would without doubt recommend these plays to anyone with an interest in theatre.
Of course that's me talking about having seen it in performance, and for me reading the play is merely a way of re-capturing what I saw, so I can't entirely speak for how it reads as a script. My Arm, however, stands up very well simply as a monologue, even without the trick of using borrowed objects from the audience in the place of characters - again, I will point you to the foreword to explain why this is such a brilliant staging device, all I can say is that in performance it totally works. The other two plays in this volume - ENGLAND and The Author - I did not get to see in performance, so I have only read them in this book, and they appear to stand up pretty well nonetheless. I'd say that ENGLAND probably loses the most in transition to page as you can't really capture the effect of the lines alternating between the two performers, nor the sound design described in the script, but in both cases there's still a clear narrative and the questions raised by the pieces are apparent.
These plays aren't really likely to be performed by other companies as they're quite specific to the persona of the author I think - although I believe An Oak Tree has been performed around the world - so reading these is probably your only way to experience these plays now. Although I do think that Crouch is one of the best current playwrights about, he's not as well known as he should be because his work is very much geared towards fringe venues and hence doesn't reach wide audiences. I would without doubt recommend these plays to anyone with an interest in theatre.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews