Mother love and oil greed

Daniel Nelson

Mix mother-daughter tensions with international control over petroleum resources and you get Oil, at the Almeida Theatre.

Ella Hickson’s play begins with a dirt-poor family eking out a living in Cornwall at the end of the 19^th century. Into their tense, dense family network walks a man in a ten-gallon hat, dazzling them with a new source of light – kerosene – and wanting to buy their land and thus change their lives forever. The family’s reactions range from fear to fascination, and one of the women, who is pregnant, steps outside. The wheel is set in motion.

The action shifts in time and place, to Tehran in 1908 when London is trying to secure supplies of the black gold that’s needed for domestic and global power; years later again, to Hampstead in the ‘70s, as Libya decides to take a direct share in its own resources and oil executive mum sees off teenage daughter’s hapless boyfriend but is less successful with President Gadaffi’s emissary; to Iraq, where MP mum comes to drag idealistic daughter to safety; and finally to fat-suited old age in energy-poor Cornwall in 2051 and a Chinese energy twist. 

These scenes are about control, personal and political: the mother trying to protect her daughter and steer her away from difficult times and towards a better future, Britain trying to protect its geopolitical and economic interests. 

Is the mother selfless or selfish? Is Britain blinded by colonial arrogance – and in the end by its failure to see beyond oil?

It’s an epic play with big (if not particularly original) thoughts. But don’t be put off: it’s not a “political play” in which the writer’s grim determination to make a point suffocates the people and the fun. It’s entertaining, funny, moving. Even the grim opening scene of rural poverty is gripping and darkly fascinating, and when the play opens out there’s farce-like ducking under banquet tables in Persia and cunnilingus on the kitchen table in London.

Perhaps it doesn’t add up to as much as the individual scenes suggest, but the journey is great.

* Oil is at the Almeida Theatre, Almeida Street, N1, until 26 November. Info: 7359 4404/ https://www.almeida.co.uk/

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Mother and daughter: Oil

Image by Richard H. Smith