Writer: Anthony Gretton
Director: Amber Williams
Set sometime in the past when Princess Diana, Madeleine McCann and Wayne Rooney were the headlines on the front pages of a single issue of the Daily Express, and when you could still smoke in pubs, is the glacially paced The Colour of Oil. It gets its title from the stain on the bar counter that landlady Alison is determined to remove. Vanessa, seemingly the only regular at the pub, likes the fact that the black mark contains no other colours. Anthony Gretton’s play is just as colourless.
Alison is a young landlady and is married to the controlling, perpetually drunk Rob. He, too, is young and appears to knock back the drink in order to dispel the ghost of his hypermasculine father, who, despite his death, haunts the pub in his dressing gown, moving from bar to table and then back again. If the pub were to make a profit, then Rob would be drinking it all away.
It’s not surprising that the pub is so quiet. It is brightly lit; only one beer is available on tap, and Alison serves shots of whiskey in dimpled beer glasses. One lunchtime, Alison is surprised by a punter walking in. This is Peter, who, with his long hair and cheap suit, appears to have walked in from another decade: the 70s, perhaps? He’s in the doghouse after some argument with his wife, and rather than go home, he will drown his sorrows at the bar. Alison joins him, and they discuss boredom.
Little happens in the first act of this play, which is advertised as 90 minutes long, but with a late start, pushes towards the two-and-a-half-hour mark. Both Alison and Peter are lonely in their relationships and wish for better lives. Vanessa pops in for a shot. Rob comes home three sheets to the wind. His father scowls from his table.
Fundamentally, it’s a play about toxic masculinity and how this identity can be passed from father to son. Rob’s father gleams with pride each time his son snipes at Alison and is disappointed when Rob throws her even a hint of kindness. Rob (Gretton, who plays a very good drunk), puffs out his chest in every confrontation he has with the other characters, trying to summon the spirit of his father in his attempts at domination.
There are some excellent choreographed fight scenes that make the second act a little more exciting, but the narrative never really moves on as the characters circle around the same arguments, the same conversations. In a play which is really only about Rob and Alison (a convincing Florence Harvey), the presence of Vanessa (feisty, yet frail in Valentina Zeta Angelucci’s hands) and the morose Peter (Ashton Frank) seems superfluous. Graeme Culliton, who is on stage for most of the time, is given little to do but glower, and his story of drowned kittens is a little on-the-nose.
It’s not entirely clear why Gretton has chosen to place his play in the past, but director Amber Williams makes full use of the Bread and Roses’ space, dispensing with the raised stage and having, instead, the audience on three sides. The decision to keep the house lights up fully is not so successful, however, and drains any tension from the action. Surely a few of the many conversations between two characters could be spotlighted to add variety, if nothing else?
In recent years, there have been countless plays about toxic masculinity, but The Colour of Oil, even though it is well-performed, adds nothing new to the conversation. Like father, like son appears to be the thesis.
Runs until 29 November 2025
