Word: derrick
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...Show-Off (by George Kelly; produced by David Heilweil & Derrick Lynn-Thomas) revives on Broadway an old favorite of the '20s, while familiarizing Broadway with a new favorite of the provinces-theater-in-the-round. Both the play and the production have drawbacks, but both come off pleasantly enough. Performed on an arena-like stage with the audience at its elbow and on all four sides, Broadway's theater-in-the-round at times resembles theater-in-the-rough. But the illusion of life is quite as strong as with orthodox staging; what is diminished is the illusion...
Then, last April, Alberta's great oil bonanza dumped a derrick on Bill Mulligan's 320 acres smack behind the tumbledown Mulligan shack. Unlike 99% of Alberta's farmers, Paw Mulligan held mineral rights to his land.* By last week his windfall had reached $40,000 or $50,000-he hadn't bothered to figure it out exactly. Besides, most of it had already been spent on a whale of a good time...
...Sinclair proves his old admirers at least halfway wrong. In this happily Buddless parody of Richardson's famous classic written in 18th Century idiom, Sinclair shows that though he may no longer be capable of striking Oil! he still has craft and subtlety enough to rig a strong derrick and drill some telling holes in the seamier sides of U.S. life. Not that his plumbings achieve any new level, for in Another Pamela, as "in almost everything he has written, Sinclair sticks close to his favorite theme: the way of life of the wealthy and the power that money...
...luck held. He bought up a lease with only eleven days to run, gambled on drilling before its expiration date. It rained night & day for the whole eleven days. McCarthy toiled in knee-deep, liquid mud for days at a stretch, drove his men to exhaustion. But his derrick was up and rigged and his rotary turning in 10½ days. He brought in a big gas producer...
Then one disaster after another hit him: a derrick collapsed, a well blew out and started a quarter-million-dollar fire. McCarthy invaded the Palacios district, sank $700,000 in leases, a million dollars in equipment, drilled five disappointing wells at once and went broke. By the time his mansion was built he was $1,500,000 in debt...