The Incident Pit
Tristan Bates Theatre
Reviewed – 27th July 2019
★½
“The actors are talented, and do their best with the starkest of stagings”
Wikipedia defines an incident pit as ‘a conceptual pit with sides that become steeper over time and with each new incident until a point of no return is reached. As time moves forward, seemingly innocuous incidents push a situation further toward a bad situation’. Regrettably, the bad situation here is an uncomfortable combination of underwhelming scripting and direction.
The play’s namesake is a flooded quarry, the depths of which remain unexplored. As the play opens, yet another diver has lost their life in the attempt, and the performance goes on to document the impact of the seductive pull of this untamed beast as two divers consider what might lie below. The premise is gripping and there are chances here for fascinating themes to be explored. Where does bravery end and recklessness begin? When does courage and determination tip into selfishness and obsession? And what is it about unexplored places that so compels us?
The fact that the theses are so promising makes the execution all the more frustrating. The Tristan Bates specialises in new writing, and this is to be celebrated – but The Incident Pit is a salutary reminder that sparkling playwriting is so much more than just bodily lifting the written word into stage dialogue. The actors in this two-hander, Carl Wharton and Miranda Benjamin, do their best but the language is unforgiving. Clumsy, improbable phrases like ‘she was decorated on her return extensively’ (Benjamin as Fiona on her resistance fighter grandmother) and ‘the pit has claimed the lives of…’ (Martin, played by Wharton) make it impossible for us to believe in these characters (not to mention the unexplained peculiarity of two people who seem to have nothing in common and seem to frankly dislike one other spending so much time in each other’s company). This not how people speak, and it’s hard to watch the cast try and sometimes fail to inject credibility into the script.
Wharton, especially, seems to struggle. He has the perfect look for diving-obsessed Martin; athletic, lean, driven. But the plodding pacing and unvarying tone (with a few high drama moments that, when they come, seem so at odds and without preamble that they ring out, sounding tinny) mean that Wharton’s delivery drifts towards monotony.
One of the more febrile moments, a wartime scene, falls especially flat. Fiona’s grandmother is bound to a chair while Martin stalks around as a Nazi officer in a performance dripping with cliches. We’re but a hair’s breadth away from ‘vee haff ways of making you talk’ here, and the plot conceit deserves better. Using ‘ein’ and ‘und’ liberally throughput speech in a frankly hammy German accent doesn’t make for a convincing or in any way menacing performance; again, Wharton has been hamstrung by scripting, but the delivery and indeed the directing (by Chris Leicester, also writing and producing) call for far more nuance.
The titular pit sounds full of intrigue and menace, and the ideas here are compelling. The actors are talented, and do their best with the starkest of stagings. But ultimately, the thrill of this pit comes not during the drama of the night, but at the production’s end.
Reviewed by Abi Davies
The Incident Pit
Tristan Bates Theatre
Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:
Drowned or Saved? | ★★★★ | November 2018
Me & My Left Ball | ★★★★ | January 2019
Nuns | ★★★ | January 2019
Classified | ★★★½ | March 2019
Oranges & Ink | ★★ | March 2019
Mortgage | ★★★ | April 2019
Sad About The Cows | ★★ | May 2019
The Luncheon | ★★★ | June 2019
To Drone In The Rain | ★★ | June 2019
Sorry Did I Wake You | ★★★★ | July 2019
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