A News From Nowhere production. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre on January 27 as part of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. No remaining performances

In an oak tree, playwright and actor Tim Crouch devours his own intentions—or some of them, anyway.

In a fantastically original conceit, Crouch performs this two-person show with a different professional actor every night. That other actor has never seen the script before she or he steps on-stage. Crouch cues his fellow performers by whispering or by speaking to them through earphones. Sometimes he hands them bits of text to read.

Crouch plays a hypnotist who has accidentally killed a girl with his car. The other actor plays the child’s father, who volunteers as a subject during the hypnotist’s performance. The father is in psychological trouble: he has come to believe that his daughter has transformed into an oak tree.

The show is about the beauties and dangers of the transformative power of the imagination. In that sense, it’s about the collusion of audiences and artists in the theatre. More specifically, it’s also about the joy of acting, the thrill of spontaneous invention. Crouch created this show partly in reaction to actors who arrive on-stage with rigidly predetermined ideas of where their performances will go.

Ironically, that’s exactly the trap Crouch fell into the evening I saw an oak tree. His acting partner, Jonathon Young, was fearless and fresh. When his hypnotized character was told he was a brilliant piano player, Young tickled the imaginary ivories with both hands and both feet—on several keyboards. The grief, when it came, was spontaneous and moving.

Young’s authenticity made it clear that Crouch was pursuing a predetermined and sentimental agenda. Put simply, he overacted and ignored what Young was offering him. Since the whole thing is built on the idea of responsiveness, that was disappointing.

There was plenty of intelligence, playfulness, and theatrical tension in this evening. I just wish that Crouch had been as playful as his costar was.