REVIEW: OIL Is A Time Travelling Tale Of The History Of Western Civilisation's Relationship With The Energy Source, Providing A Caution For The Future.

Thursday 9th November 2023, 7:30pm, Wharf 1 Theatre Walsh Bay

Ella Hickson’s OIL takes the audience on a journey through Britain's relationship with petroleum, providing a warning for the future as the environmental impact takes hold and resources dwindle. This new production, directed by Paige Rattray, is presented with bold scenes as the past, present and future are explored.

Once the premise that Oil will follow the time traveling May (Brooke Satchwell) and her daughter Amy (Charlotte Friels) across a century and a half as May aspires for more than the bleak, dark and cold pre-industrial age Cornwall and a life of servitude is understood, the series of five scenes that play out over two and a half hours (including interval) will be much clearer.  Oil starts in 1889 Cornwall as young bride May decides that her husband Joss’ (Josh McConville) reticence to embrace the new technology presented by travelling salesman William Whitcomb (Callan Colley) and a future of hardship and cold, following her dictatorial mother-in-law’s (Anne Tenney) rules, and fending off her abusive alcoholic brother in law Samuel (Benedict Samuel), is not the destiny she wants for herself and the child she is expecting. From here May and her daughter Amy are catapulted through time to be present at various milestones in the modern relationship with oil trade with May finally achieving her goal of becoming the top of the food chain regardless of cost.  Though the pair barely age between each improbable leap they retain the knowledge gained at each prior stage, helping frame Amy’s rebellion and activism which is a counterpoint to her mother’s actions in manner akin to the way their names are anagrams of each other.   

Paige Rattray has designed this production as an in-the-round experience and set designer Emma White has developed an intriguingly flexible performance space that enables five distinct scenes, including an intriguing reveal, all bordered black oil stained dirt.  With each scene presented with illumination to simulate the lighting available at the time the scene is set, the opening scene is particularly dark as candles and wood fires still illuminated and heated the cold Cornwall farmhouse. Thankfully lighting designer Paul Jackson eventually gives the scene more than the candlelight and later scenes simulate fluorescent lighting, natural sunlight and a more futuristic ‘clean’ white light with an ethereal expression of May’s awareness of what she has given up achieving her dream.  David Fleischer’s costuming aids in the shifts in time, from the dirt laden clothes of the struggling farmers to the modern age and beyond. 

While some of the dialogue presented in the first and last scene are hampered by the stronger Cornish accents and in-the-round blocking where dialogue was directed away from certain parts of the audience or focused to the central point of the stage, OIL is, overall, an intriguing and enlightening piece of theater.  It draws on history to create the fictional expression and once the time travel precept is understood from having a chance to read  “A Timeline of OIL” in the program at the interval, the work becomes a lot clearer as the logic of a child still being quite young despite the 19 years between scenes becomes more understandable. 

As the two core characters, Brooke Satchwell and Charlotte Friels ensure that the mother and daughter duo grow and evolve while expressing the understanding that the contrasting elements of the characters remains throughout as the push and flex against each other’s ideas and ideals.  Satchwell ensures that May is formidable, calculating and doing what she needs to to protect what she sees as her right, regardless of the underlying questionable ethics that have particularly come to light when seen in terms of a 21st century lens.  Friels gives Amy an immaturity which, when paired with her beliefs, actually leads to an odd entitlement and arrogance that leads her to believe that she, the white foreigner, knows more about what people like her Iraqi friend Aminah (Violette Ayad) and her family need when May and her foreign oil baron counterparts have left Aminah’s country without the resources to sustain itself.  Delivering the voice of an average citizen affected by the West’s exploitation of her countries resources, Ayad captures the pain and anger even more poignantly than the diplomat Mr. Farouk (Saif Alawadi) that had been sent to negotiate with May before the 1973 Oil crisis.

In a world where the means to run the industry that society has come to expect is in shorter supply and the after affects of the limited resource is becoming more critical, OIL is powerful and timely.  It is is both an expression of environmental science impacts, an understanding of how bigger economies treat their ‘neighbors’ and how wealthy countries and companies have exploited poorer nations without providing any real help for their sustainability.  Aside from the science and exploration side of the work, OIL is also a strong female driven story as May rails against the patriarchy, and also a considered tale of a maternal bond as the relationship between mother and daughter is expressed.  Well worth seeing but read the program prior.

https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/whats-on/productions/2023/oil

Photos: Prudence Upton

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