Oil

Oil is an enthralling theatrical leap through the story of black gold, from freezing dark poverty in the 1800’s without it, our imperial desperation to plunder it, the Middle Eastern power games to keep it, and then back to the cold without it in 2050. And that’s Ground Zero.

Our oil dependence, told through five chapters, is projected to last just 160 years. It seems quite short, and even more so, with British playwright overlaying her oil epic with the intense relationship between a mother and her daughter, which begins and ends in the bleak cold of Cornwall.  Moving also through Tehran 1908, Hampstead 1970, Baghdad 2025, the world ages faster than they do.

A compelling Brooke Satchwell is outstanding as May who, young and pregnant, leaves her great carnal love (Josh McConville), family and poverty in a quest for survival and freedom. A display of magical kerosene from a mysterious American visitor (Callan Colley), come to buy their land, has given her light, and the hope of warmth for her and her daughter.  

Charlotte Friels excels as the skittish (and slowly aging) Amy, furious at a mother desperate to protect her from the catastrophes of early love and male control.  Their fights are wonderfully ferocious but as true as their frequent admissions of love.

Their own generational shifts are nicely supported by actors playing different characters with deliberate echoes of others played earlier, like Violette Ayad as Amy’s various Middle Eastern companions, and others from Damien Strouthos. Benedict Samuel makes a fine prat of an English officer out to squeeze the Persians for oil rights, and whose advances Amy sidesteps, as usual.  

Hickson’s mix of characters, periods and big and small themes threaten to splinter into non-sequiturs, however witty, but her great theatrical craftmanship eases us through, especially in the hands of director Paige Rattray.  

Rattray’s decision with designer Emma White to stage it in the round maintains the kinetic energy of the cast and the audience are expectantly involved as sets and periods are speedily changed, especially through Paul Jackson’s lighting.  Words though are sometimes lost. David Fleischer costumes are true to period but understated as such, and the long notes of Clemence Williams’ sound echo through.

Oil is a large novelistic work, but delivers theatricality and imaginatively some powerful messages about plundering the environment, colonial legacies, feminist disillusionment, loneliness and – if we can see it – the likely geopolitical world of 2050.  Apparently, we’ll be powered by Helum-3 mined from the moon.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Prudence Upton.