Two strangers (Joseph Wycoff and Max Easey) book a fishing trip under a veteran sailor (Suzy Sampson).
Out on the water, the trio’s plans are scuppered by a series of escalating dangers…
While waiting for help, they find a young woman (Meg Sara Andrews) floating on the water – another survivor of the sea.
Can this weary foursome survive the elements? Or each other?
A thriller can be a difficult genre to mount on stage. It is a genre based on immersion, which makes sense for literature, movies or radio. To varying degrees, the suspension of disbelief is built into the medium. Shark in a Boat benefits from the claustrophobia of its setting – while different in terms of plot and action the show is essentially a locked room thriller like Wait Until Dark.
The primary set is the boat, represented by pieces of mobile scenery (wheel, benches on pieces of decking) which the acting troupe move in a semicircle during every scene change – it is an effective strategy, showing both the trio’s passage and the passage of time.
While the press release references Jaws and Dead Calm, Shark in a Boat, in both premise and tone, feels like a theatrical homage to the adventure novels of authors like Desmond Bagley or Alistair Maclean – a small group of ordinary people forced together to battle the elements and more human-instigated threats.
What is most refreshing about Shark in a Boat is this is a genuine genre piece. There is no sense of parody or satire to the introduction of familiar archetypes and plot devices.
The cast are on the same page, playing the piece totally straight. There is humour to the piece, but it comes from the character dynamics. It never feels like the actors are winking at the audience.
As a play, Shark in a Boat is made up of two distinct halves.
The first half is an efficient little tension machine, as a series of seemingly random incidents put our characters in jeopardy. This first half seems to be a contest of differing views of the world: a place of order or one of infinite variables, of giant systems in which individual human beings are powerless to do anything.
There is something strangely affecting about the first half, not in terms of the variables thrown at our protagonists, but how they react and begin to reveal their true selves.
There is not a lot of plot to the first half – the characters have a chance to breathe.
The second half delivers a twist, a revelation designed to reorient our view of the story and the characters. After a first half that pits its characters against forces of nature a perverse sense of order is introduced, and the show becomes something more prosaic.
The second half feels like a sudden infusion of plot, and the tension begins to bleed away. What previously felt like a series of escalating dangers, the result of one error leading to another, now turns into a different kind of thriller – a more generic and contrived one.
It is an enjoyable show, but Shark in a Boat feels like it just misses on its promise.
Shark in a Boat plays at Pitt Street Theatre 27th February – 8th of March, before playing the Rose Theatre 11th-14th of March.
