In The Tree Climber, a detective, a lizard, a time-travelling dervish, and a magic tree all help to turn the quiet life of a married couple upside down.

Tawfiq al-Hakim’s plays deal with themes of universal rather than local application: the role of the artist in society, the predicament of man in the face of forces he neither controls nor understands, the use and abuse of power.

In the play,. the retired Bahadair Effendi and his wife, each immured in a self-created world, are universal characters. Only the dervish is a product of the East and represents the hidden forces.