There Has Possibly Been an Incident

This sparse and ultimately unsatisfactory play combines three monologues, narrated in fragments by three seated and expressionless actors; and a dialogue based on the trial of a fanatical child-killer who is never named as Anders Behring Breivik.

With impressive precision but little warmth, Fringe First-winner Chris Thorpe sets out to analyse the mysterious moments of rupture at which the lives of people and countries change course. Each story is spoken in the first person but there is only one narrative voice, diligently monitoring the processes of consciousness, but aloof from them. 

Best is the monologue of somebody watching a man in a white shirt step into history as the iconic Tank Man of Tiananmen Square. Why does it feel as though this one person was destined to act, the watcher asks, while everybody else was condemned to do nothing? The play's one very powerful moment comes when this speaker observes that the plastic bags dangling from Tank Man's hands work the same muscles that a yoke would, or a cross. 

The script's ponderous tone isn't as well suited to the second story, in which an expressionless actor logs the mental processes of somebody on a crashing plane. Weakest is the exculpatory monologue of a revolutionary-turned-despot, which adds little to the truism that power corrupts. The play's final section, recited choral-style by all three actors under harsh lighting, ensures that this is a near-miss rather than a qualified success. Mastery of the script seems essential here, with three people talking in synch, and unfortunately there are a few discordant slip-ups.