Richard Parker ★★★★

“Do you believe in coincidences that cannot be explained?”

There’s something of a campfire story or perhaps one of the Tales of the Unexpected about Owen Thomas‘s play Richard Parker in that it centres around a delicious intrigue.

Two men meet seemingly by chance on a boat. Both, it transpires when they get talking, are making the trip to attend a funeral. One of the men seeing the other reading a book asks if he has ever read any Edgar Allan Poe. He then proceeds to relate the plot of Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket which sees four men lost at sea having to eat the cabin boy in order to survive. He was called Richard Parker.

Forty years later, in a real life, it transpires a yacht sank casting four men adrift. After weeks without sustenance, they decide that one of them should be sacrificed as food for the other three, just as in Poe’s novel. The unfortunate one chosen was called, you guessed it, Richard Parker.

When one of the two on the boat begins to walk away, the other reveals he knows that his name is Richard Parker. Baffled at this surprise, he asks “How do you know my name?” The chilling reply comes “Your name is also my name!”

If you are getting a sinking feeling that we are giving too much of the plot away, fear not: this is just the start of Owen Thomas’s cunning, knotty tale.

Bridge House Theatre’s own Associate Director and Artistic Director play the two characters. Joseph Lindoe‘s Richard Parker (let’s call him Richard 1 to avoid confusion) runs the emotional gamut. Lindoe is convincingly wide-eyed and suspicious of his fellow passenger. As he finds himself as the wrong person in the wrong place, he plays Richard 1’s mounting panic with considerable skill and control.

By contrast Luke Adamson gives his Richard Parker (Richard 2) a smiling eccentricity coupled with a disconcerting undercurrent of manipulation. Incredibly knowledgeable on the subject, Richard 2 is a walking Wiki page on the subject of coincidences. In a truly impressive feat of memory, Adamson’s performance of Richard 2 disappearing down the Presidents Kennedy and Lincoln coincidence rabbit hole is spectacular. (For those unaware, there are an unlikely amount of coincidences between the two American Presidents: both ‘Lincoln’ and ‘Kennedy’ have seven letters; Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846, Kennedy in 1946. Both were shot with their wives next to them; their assassins had three names composed of 15 letters; Booth ran from a theatre and was caught in a warehouse while Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theatre; both were succeeded by their vice Presidents who were both called Johnson and who were both born in ’08 a century apart; and so many more instances).

It’s the curious strangeness innate to the concept of coincidence that is threaded skillfully through the play. Richard 2’s persuasiveness, that the coincidental links between them amounts to an inescapable fate, drives the drama’s narrative twist and turns. Both performers convey the sharp humour and the play’s relentless, inexorable logic with such aplomb that you never stop to consider some potential plot holes.

Richard Parker is a tasty deep dive into the power of coincidence. A constantly intriguing black comedy, it takes you on an irresistible journey with a satisfying final twist that is nothing short of delicious!