Brooke Satchwell makes her STC debut in this time-bending, globetrotting epic from British playwright Ella Hickson. Opening in Cornwall in the late 19th century, the ambitious play moves to the Middle East in the 1920s and on to today. Focusing on a woman called May, it explores the price that has to be paid for progress and tackles themes including empire, fossil fuels, the environment and mother-daughter relationships.

Limelight Editor’s Choice

In a remote English farmhouse at the end of the 19th century, a young woman witnesses the blinding light of an oil lamp for the first time before running into the midwinter night. She’s sacrificing the world she knows and the man she loves to build a better life for the daughter she’s soon to have. So begins the story of May and Amy.

Written by Ella Hickson – one of Britain’s most exciting and boundary-pushing playwrights – Oil explores the deeply relatable bond between a mother and daughter, mapped against the rise and fall of two of modernity’s most powerful players: crude oil and the British Empire. Hickson sends her protagonists on a gripping quest from the Industrial Age in Europe, to the Middle East in the 1920s, through to our present moment and into the future, as she asks the question: how much is too much?