“Scorchingly ambitious,” (The Guardian) this genre-busting American premiere follows mothers and daughters over two centuries, from the dawn of the age of oil in 1889 to its “peak-oil” demise sometime in the not-to-distant future. In five separate but connected playlets, a single mother named May defies the odds to provide for her daughter by any means necessary. From Cornwall, to Tehran, London, Baghdad, and back, the mother-daughter power struggle evolves and shifts, even as the resources that fuel it (and the rest of the world) begin to dwindle. Bursting with theatricality, big ideas, and deeply personal emotions, Oil showcases the talent of one of Britain’s fastest rising playwrights.
“an audacious piece of writing… a huge, ambitious study of co-dependency: mother and daughter, man and machine, east and west, Britain and empire.” - Time Out London