We were promised earnest social responses and little known mysteries that unravelled greater insight into a world beside trees. Instead we have personal familial memories, so tiring to listen to that the house lights have to be flicked on in intervals to humiliate the secret nappers. The pianist is an inspired professional whose performance is welcome despite it’s ambiguous connection. The narrators want to liven things up, there’s effort here but it soon becomes hard to care.
Moving around the stage a little more, sweeping as if the stage were a temple, a change of clothes to indicate a change of direction, and another uninspiring word of wisdom sucking our souls away a minute at a time. That’s it. Take your time swallowing back a few bottles of water if only to make a point that we, like trees, are natural. De-root the bonsai that’s been lit up, intentionally, by a bedside lamp on and off throughout the show and tape it to a narrators chest as if it were growing there.
The male speaker is in awe, not only of how nature manages to keep a tree alive but also of how they appear to speak to him, without actually talking. Yet, we presume, he is merely thinking out loud as it seems he enjoys this self-satisfying and quite frankly irritating drivel. What appears a recited speech is at times read like a preachy TV historian who needs 5 takes to get a line right.
We’re meant to care, that’s why we’re here. Instead we’re fobbed off with the premise of the distracting and harmful presumptions that carbon offsetting is as environmentally nurturing as not having flown from Singapore to put on an utterly soul destroying show. Here’s some advice for traveling across the world to prattle on about any old familial experience which featured a tree in the background, just don’t.
1/5 
Celia Philips
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