Simon Ward reviews Oils at RADA Studios

Oils by Jessica Rachid, which ran for two nights at RADA Studios as part of the Bloomsbury Festival, deals with the theme of domestic violence and abuse. Based on her own mother’s experience of horrendous abuse while she was pregnant, it is important that these stories are told and that the hidden pain and suffering of the abused are brought into the light. The production is rightly proud to be working alongside the domestic abuse charity Refuge.

Sadly, for me, this production failed to rise to the challenge of its important subject matter. With a minimal set, and few props, the weight of carrying the message fell to Kat Kashefi as the (Iranian) Mother and Matthew Blaney as the (Irish Catholic) Father. Kashefi, in particular, as the primary narrator, was lacking in the presence necessary to command our attention. Her reticence may have been intended to mirror the Mother’s attitude with the Father, but it conveyed rather a hesitancy and lack of confidence with the script. At times she was so quiet as to be barely audible, even from the front row.

We got no sense of what had drawn these two quite disparate characters together – we get hints that their relationship must have been a challenge to both families, and especially to the Mother’s, but there was no chemistry between the actors which would explain why they carried on regardless. If anything, the relationship seemed to consist of the constant nagging and complaining born of many years together, rather than the early days and expectation of a first child. We open at 4am in a derelict Brick Lane kebab shop, a promising enough beginning, but it’s insufficiently worked through. Why 4am? Was it a late-night drunken whim? Why Brick Lane or kebabs? We get too few of the details of their lives to be able to form a picture of who or what they are – the script feels lacking here, and the sparsity of the set doesn’t help.

As the Father, Blaney prefigures the violence to come as he wields an unlikely cricket bat, and endlessly sharpens a knife. He manages to exude a kind of manic energy and a desperate, if doomed, effort to distance himself from the cruelty he experienced from his own father. In spite of managing to set up and run the business successfully, there is never enough money, and he remains frustrated and angry. Although there are triggers to the eventual outburst, we don’t really get enough of a sense of how that anger and frustration builds up to such an extent that he will commit such terrible acts. Maybe it is always in reality a mystery, but for the play to work we need to be led to understand how it could happen. The abuse itself, however, is handled tactfully and rather well – it is menacing and horrible but not gratuitous.

This is a difficult and important topic, and it is brave of Rachid to tackle it. The best and most touching moment of the piece is a kind of epilogue where Kashefi steps out of role and explains the truth behind the play – it has a simplicity and sincerity which I found the rest of the play somehow lacked.

Oils ran on 14th and 15th October at RADA Studios, 16 Chenies Street, London WC1E 7EX