MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
Latest editorial
The true cost of ‘black gold’
MAYER WAKEFIELD recommends a sharply nuanced drama on generations subjugated by oil exploitation
PAUL DONOVAN recommends the fine performances in this account of the pre-war meeting between the US president and the British king
TECLYN AROD relishes an intimate celebration of jazz improvisation that mixes local and national musicians
The missing sister, the vengeful WAG, cruise ship claustrophobia, and reanimated Avengers
Three great releases of lost concerts by Duke Ellington Orchestra, John Taylor & Stan Sulzman, and Joe Henderson
To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
Oil
Almeida Theatre
London N1
4/5
NO WONDER it took Ella Hickson over six years to write Oil.
Her exploration of Britain’s relationship with the black gold is so wide in scope that, in just under three hours, Hickson guides her audience from Cornwall in 1889 to a bleak, mid-21st-century dystopian Britain via Persia, Libya and beyond.
Similar stories
MIRANDA RICHMOND relishes the gloriously liberated art of Roy Oxlade, and traces his method back to the thinking of David Bomberg, his acknowledged teacher
MARY CONWAY becomes impatient with the intellectual self-indulgence of Tom Stoppard in a production that is, nevertheless, total class
STEVE JOHNSON relishes a celebration of the commonality of folk music and its links with the struggles of working people the world over
MAYER WAKEFIELD is gripped by a production dives rapidly from champagne-quaffing slick to fraying motormouth