Ella Hickson’s Oil is a staggeringly good show about a mother and her daughter. The pair seem to drift through time – from the late 19th century into the future – as the play's action centres around oil and humanity’s relationship to the resource. We first meet May, played by Daniela Farinacci, in Cornwall, at a candlelit farmstead where she awaits the birth of her daughter and dreams of finding her own power. In this section, a businessman shows her and her family a kerosene lamp. Next, we skip forward several decades – May's daughter Amy, played by Hannah Fredericksen, is now a young girl. The two are in Tehran, where May meets a British admiral scheming to place the city’s oil reserves in the empire’s clutches. It’s risky to structure the play around oil, but it pays off explosively: each story is lit in a way which reflects the current era, giving each age a distinct texture. Anchoring it all are the performances: the experimental elements (the set design, the odd chronology) are balanced with incredible performances by both Fredericksen and Farinacci. Stereotypes of motherhood are shucked away and the transformations of the central relationship are thrilling to watch, particularly when Farinacci becomes a ruthless oil baroness.
The script has its soft spots. Particularly in the earlier scenes, conflict seems to escalate out of nowhere, and sometimes attempts to shock feel gratuitous. Still, the satisfaction of watching the play’s multiple moving parts come together is incredibly powerful. What do we owe the people responsible for bringing us into the world, the play asks. How do we keep the lights on? Oil is a precious, thundering epic of a play, which grapples with those questions with wit, intelligence, and a ferocious passion.
