If you are keen on mounting site specific productions and the specific site you have in mind is an oil rig in the North Sea you might well feel that the idea's a bit impractical.  But, thought Gridiron, what could we do instead?  It's obvious really.  Build a wee rig in a big shed.

And that's what they did.  In shed 36 in the port of Dundee to be precise.  And that's where I went one dark and miserable Sunday night in the least comfortable bus I've ever been in, fortunately only from the city centre to the port.

The shed was big, very big with a very high roof.  The rig, dinky in comparison with the real live stuff parked in the water outside, was in a corner.  It had a derrick and a helipad and actors in orange suits and hard hats did manly things with pipes and chains and things as we took our seats in a semicircle facing them and wrapped the thoughtfully supplied blanket around our nether regions.

It looked and sounded great and I was full of excited anticipation.  But as we know it is often better to travel hopefully than to arrive.  The show was called Crude.  There was something of a narrative thread throughout centred on a oilworker; his trials and tribulations, the impact of his work pattern on his marriage and family life, the dangers he faced and so on. He even dreams about an oil selkie, an excellent bit of circus work here by an actress. Every now and then a jolly American jumped up to remind us how dependent we are on oil and for how long we've needed it.  His native forebears daubed it on their cheeks as warpaint and now we use it in making lipstick for much the same purpose.  And what about all those plastic bags.

Everything they did was well done and all the little scenes well thought out and woven together into a decent enough show but I didn't find it very gripping nor was I sure what its aim was.  Was it meant to entertain or to provoke despair at the rape of the planet or what.  That wasn't clear to me perhaps because of the very variable audibility of the actors.  Despite being miked up as soon as they turned their heads away from a straight line to my ears it was hard to hear.  Tricky to control sound in such a cavernous setting (with rain pelting down on the tin roof from time to time) but the non spoken sound worked well so I don't understand why handling speech didn't. 

Here's a professional review or two.