Oil(Almeida)

Just got back from this evenings perforemance and I can say I really enjoyed it. This was clever and a great new piece. I really liked the sound design and the way the actors were at the side of the stage and how it was just all put together. All the performances especially Duffs and Kettles were great , just check this play out.

My opinion is probably influenced by my companion who announced it 'one of the most irritating plays I've ever seen.'

As Nash16 says the first half is set in the past (1880s, 1908, 1970s) and the second half in the future. I found the first two scenes intriguing and unpredictable. The first scene is lit almost entirely by candle light. From Row H in the stalls it was quite murky and I would imagine the back of the circle it would really be hard to watch. But they created another world and a cold inhospitable environment. The second scene had that awkward thing of an adult playing a young child, but once you got over that, it was an interesting situation - a young wayward woman in Iran with her child looking for adventure - and I particularly liked Anne-Marie Duff in that scene. The third scene lost me entirely - I thought it was ghastly with some really poor attempts at humour (at least I think that's what that on table sex scene was.) At the interval I heard the man in front of me say ,'Well the jury's out. It may be one of those plays where it all comes together in the second half.' The second half began with a weak scene but the last one was, to me, fascinating - I love that sort of dystopian stuff.

My disgruntled companion said: 'Really, really mediocre acting. At least you could see the third scene. Very preachy. Pretentious.' He does have a point on the pretentious stuff - I thought I might like the mic interludes/narration but actually laughed at the 'A woman is on a plan, fly fly fly fly, a stewardess offers her an iced drink as an unmanned airplane drops bombs below' etc. Ditto the dialogue lines 'You're alone' 'But alive.'

The takeaway for me: Our dependency on oil is understandable (established in first scene) but destructive and the playwright aligns this with a woman's need for freedom (not sure I entirely got this connection.)

Last night it was two hours forty including a 20 minute interval (7 p.m. start out at 9.40.)

Pretty much exactly what I thought about the play. Incoherent, rambling and quite often factually wrong. For instance, in the blizzard of slide images I noticed a steam train which is powered by...coal!

There is so much to say about oil and its impact on the world - from the 'oil curse' to environmental degradation to allowing a state to export religious fundamentalism (Saudi and wahhabism) but this is just a set of mother-daughter scenes with some half-remembered Guardian articles thrown in. BIG disappointment.

An ambitious play with an epic feel and a genuinely interesting lead role, played superbly by Anne-Marie Duff. If the ambition isn't quite matched by the achievement then I, for one, can take that. Interesting theatre isn't always the most technically accomplished but if you don't try to do something new then the theatre deteriorates into a diet of seaid old favourites.

This plays with the medium, tells an interesting story and kept the audience - at least when I saw it - entertained. I thought the last scene was the weakest as the fat suits immediately took it into the realm of farce and the dystopia was, frankly, ill-conceived and simply not credible.

Some of the arguments, when they finally got going, were simplistic. To the point where I felt at times the point of view was arguing against the text. But boring this mst definitely is not.

I have to echo this - I managed to the interval and left.

Oh those microphone interludes are marvellous - very entertaining!

"A woman gets on a plane. The plane has wings. The plane flies. Fly fly flyyyyyyyyyy. For you are the wind beneath my wings . . . " or words to that effect.

Put me firmly in the camp who loved this one! Yes, it was messy, yes it was trying to say an awful lot but it was GREAT! It helped that F12 is such a splendid seat and so felt very "caught up" in the other worlds it created. I hear what people are saying about the facts not being true or the future not being realistic but hey we don't grump about Pinter or Beckett do we? It is one woman's imagination at all points...so cut her some slack and enjoy it for what it is! I loved the "mother daughter" stuff and how "progress" was justified at each stage by being for the child....I loved how they didn't sugar coat the past and even as our "heroine" was in love we could see how women were treated and expected to behave. I loved how it was all staged. I loved that it was mad as a basket of frogs! I came out and walked for an hour and a half sort of thinking and chuckling and thinking some more!
Some of the matinee crowd were a bit confused but to their credit most of them seemed to enjoy it!

Plays about energy are always hard as we don't know how things will develop...and don't tell me it will all be renewables in the future because, to be honest, we could be fully renewable now (particularly with hydro electric dams ) but we seem to have just commissioned a new nuclear power station for not very compelling reasons! So....you suspend disbelief and talk about the big issues.....

Oooh - see what I did? Posted my first spoiler!!!

Have yet to post mine as still haven't work out how to get off quick reply which doesn't show me all the button options and onto the full reply version that does. I noticed that one Foxa but did miss most of the others that people have mentioned here and am yet to work out that final moment.

Testing testing