“Oil” is a play in need of refining

By Robert Butler

Theatre was far too slow to address urgent environmental themes. But the last few years have seen a rapidly expanding canon. In London alone we’ve had “The Contingency Plan” (2009) at the Bush; “Greenland” (2011) at the National Theatre; “The Heretic” (2011), “Ten Billion” (2012) and “2071” (2014) at the Royal Court. The problem faced by playwrights is how to move the vastly complex environmental entanglements between the human and non-human world to centre-stage, and give them the same imaginative force as conventional dramas that focus solely on human relationships. Only Steve Waters’s “The Contingency Plan” displayed zip and zest, with characters fully immersed in the dilemmas which faced them.

The challenge is especially pronounced for Ella Hickson, the writer of a new play called “Oil”. This fossil fuel has given us – among other things – petrol, fertilisers, plastic bags, aspirin, chewing gum, lipstick and Deepwater Horizon. How do you find an angle on a substance whose most salient feature is ubiquity?