The Oracle ★★☆☆☆
Amusing one-woman show starring the semi-divine, immortal Oracle, as she grapples with bleak prophecies and struggles to adapt to the modern world.
I have tasted eternity and drunk from its cup. I am the Oracle.
If you could ask one thing about your future, what would you want to know? This is the question the audience is invited to contemplate.
The Oracle is an amusing one-woman show starring the semi-divine, immortal Oracle, as she grapples with bleak prophecies and struggles to adapt to the modern world.
Julia Pilkington is largely endearing as the Oracle: apologetic by default, perpetually anxious. She initially plays her awkwardness and self-consciousness for laughs. The opening moments of the show feel like an in-character stand-up routine, which leans too heavily on a few jokes but is nevertheless funny.
The Oracle sets out to deliver a tarot reading and is reluctant to reveal how bleak the future looks. At first, this is played for laughs. Drawing the grisly Death card, she hopefully declares, “This is a card for change!… I know it looks like Death.” She skirts around the real prophecy, clutching at straws and throwing in amusing classical allusions. But every method of divination is giving her the same answer: despair.
The show really gains momentum once the stakes are higher. The Oracle suffers prophetic fits illuminated by violently flashing lights. One sequence resembles an agitated PowerPoint presentation. She even sacrifices an unwitting sheep offstage. The poor sheep first bleats inquisitively, then nervously, then gives a final “Baa!” of terror before it is killed. The sheep’s liver is then read according to the Etruscan practice of hepatoscopy, a branch of divination which relies on a sheep’s liver.
Despite its engaging premise, the pacing is too slow: the relentless self-deprecation and awkwardness begin to wear thin. The runtime is only 60 minutes, and there are around 45 minutes of really quality content here. There are too many moments where the joke is that something is taking a long time, or the Oracle is repeating herself unnecessarily. These moments need sharpening: The Oracle still feels like a work in progress. As a Magic 8 ball might say: “Concentrate and ask again.”
Originally reviewed for The Reviews Hub. Reviewed on 18 April 2023 at the Camden People’s Theatre. No further shows are scheduled yet, if you want to stay up-to-date you could follow the writer Julia Pilkington on Twitter.