An award-winning off Broadway country rock musical having just had a run at the Edinburgh fringe and now opening in London sounds promising. Unfortunately, it disappointed on most levels.
The main problem was the venue. The Red Lion’s performance area is small with the audience on two sides. There were 10 artists in this production, including a band with a keyboard, full drum kit and two guitars. There were two backing singers and four other performers. By the time this crowd had been assembled on the performance area, along with their microphones, amplifiers, speakers etc, there was room for very little theatrical activity.
The music and the singing were amplified to an unnecessary degree and was uncomfortably loud, at least for this reviewer, and more seriously the excessively close use of microphones had the effect of distorting the sound so that the words were fairly indistinct during most of the production. This is clearly a production intended for a much larger venue where it might have worked rather well, but in the Red Lion last night it did not.
It is not really a country rock musical. The reference to country music was in the story where one of the two ex-lovers had left his relationship to pursue a career in Nashville. The music itself was much more in the rock tradition with heavy beat throughout.
The enthusiasm of the performers was tremendous, but they had virtually no acting space left in which to dramatise the story. It therefore had the feel much more of a concert than musical theatre.
Cornelius Versa as Teddy and Juliet Perel as Zelda were the two ex-lovers around whom the story revolved. Versa gave a very engaging performance as the one who broke off the relationship to pursue his career in country music. Although there were moments of tenderness between the two leads there was little real chemistry between them and the story line was weak.
Warning: if you are going to see this at the Red Lion on a warm evening such as it was on Press Night the auditorium was uncomfortably hot.
Oil and Whiskey is on at the Old Red Lion Pub and Playhouse until 18th September.
Tickets are available from oldredliontheatre.co.uk
Reviewer: Paul Ackroyd
Reviewed: 3rd September 2026
North West End UK Rating: