Oil review, Almeida

So you have an intriguing idea for a play that, when you speak it out aloud, sounds quite clever. We'd have the same characters growing old and developing their relationships across centuries, you might say, and a motif where people experience hot and cold in each scene. What that will show is how our need for warmth underpins the violence and corruption around the ownership of Oil.  When it's written, it's hard to link the strands, so you beef up the dialogue, add a blast of Bieber, introduce some laughs...  And it's still dull and still confusing. But... the Almeida have a smart director who uses CGI and dance and a booming narration to cover the holes.  Perhaps the audience won't notice?

Oil begins in the 19th century on a farm in Cornwall. Randy young wife Mae, can't get enough of her husband, Samuel, but it's freezing, and the farmhouse is dominated by his family, and they have no fuel. When a handsome American turns up at the door with Kerosene, he doesn't just illuminate the room, he sets new dreams alight in Mae's head. Pregnant and powerful, she follows him from the property and is set on a path chasing and buying Oil across time and territories.

As Mae, Anne-Marie Duff does an elegant job of morphing from a grubby farm girl to a modern single mother raising her daughter, Amy, in unorthodox ways. There is a curious scene in the 1970s where she wanders past the15-year-old receiving oral sex on the kitchen table and her only concern is getting dinner ready. This lack of concern is because Mae's Libya-based Oil business is about to be nationalised. She's distracted. But she does blow up when the kids' noisy sex impacts her negotiations with one of Gaddafi's apparatchiks. This scene changes the trajectory of Oil. From this point on it is predominantly an old-fashioned why-won't-you-have-kids-type mother-daughter relationship. Why? Who knows.

In conclusion: Carrie Cracknell's staging is lively and looks good and Yolanda Kettle as Amy is a solid foil for Duff's Mae. They are let down by Ella Hickson's unevenly structured script which is rich with in-yer-face circularity, and poor on narrative linearity. As much is said about men and women and mothers and daughters as is said about imperialism, exploitation, and energy. One has no idea what to take away from Oil; if anything.


Almeida Theatre, Almedia Street, London N1        Run ends November 26