★★★★★ 

Review by Tony Frame. Venue 53 theSpace @ Surgeons Hall – Theatre 3

It’s a serene setting we venture into at Theatre three as we take our seats to find actress Jessica Forrest sitting on the stage with her eyes closed, in a meditative state, with her hands resting at either side; her thumb and index fingers forming a circle – a classic Yogi’s pose. It was just the kind of atmosphere I needed as I had just power-walked 1.6 miles in twenty minutes because I couldn’t get parked due to the football being on. This relaxing ambience before the show began certainly helped my state of mind, and the anxiety about whether or not I would actually make the show at all had all but disappeared.

When Jessica opened her eyes she addressed us all with a poetic discourse that was filled with many beautiful verses; of the sun and the sea, of spirituality and the world around us, of nature and nurturing, of crocodiles caked in mud. This unconventional beginning felt like a prologue in a book in hindsight, one that you would read again after you had finished the novel, because it would have more meaning than the first time you read it.

The play deals with themes and situations rather than a straight-forward generic plot; a scene at the beginning where Jessica recounts her experiences as a nanny and raising other people’s children (and the impact and meaning of that) has some audience participation which makes for a couple of brilliantly funny and endearing moments. Her scene with an imaginary baby in her arms and telling the child a secret had everyone in the audience in complete silence, a stillness overtook the room as we watched the baby being cradled, the illusion of us being in a theatre with a stage had vanished, it was just us watching Jessica and the infant. That’s a testament to the power of good theatre and an invested performer.

A couple of narrative shifts from third-person to first-person in the story adds an extra layer from the monotony that can sometimes weigh down a solo show from feeling like an extended monologue, with Jessica portraying a couple of different characters using different accents. This works extremely well and breathes some life into the people she’s playing, and with the help of the tech department providing ambient sound and music (as well as lighting) throughout, it gives us an intimate feeling of her state of mind and the world that surrounds her.

The latter act deals with her experiences in Italy and takes us full circle to perhaps the meaning of The Olive Tree. There’s a couple of funny (and slightly suspenseful) moments involving a problem with the language barrier and a trip to the supermarket, but at the heart of it all is a tale about grief and sadness and of having to face the inevitable, of embracing change.  My review probably doesn’t encapsulate Jessica’s true meaning of her play, but I think that is partly the point – that each person will take something unique from it, that each person’s opinion of The Olive Tree will be slightly different due to their own personal experiences and world-view.

It reminded me of one of those foreign-language films I will find on MUBI once in a blue moon. One of those films where it’s dream-like and fractured, with haunting and beautiful imagery, where not a lot of dialogue is spoken, but the actions of the characters and their feelings on and under the surface say a thousand more words than their external voices would do justice. Jessica’s writing is exceptional, her performance is bold and heartfelt. She has created a beautifully-crafted production that I would go and see again because I know I would take more away from it with each viewing. That itself is a rarity in theatre; that is The Olive Tree in a nutshell. It’s a rare beauty that blossoms every time you see it.