BWW Reviews: THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, Greenwich Theatre, October 18 2011

Set in a Cornish house high on a remote cliff, John Goodrum's adaptation of the classic Edgar Allan Poe torture fest (at Greenwich Theatre until October 22 and on tour) compresses the action on to a circular stage upon which two men talk.

Trevelyan (Mark Homer) recounts how, in the hope of saving his wife, he came to be left in a basement dungeon, the walls of which walls depict Bosch-like scenes of depravity and the floor of which slimily slides to a pit at its centre. His interlocutor is Josiah (Nicholas Briggs), who reports on the above-stairs activities of the Dionysian Brotherhood, an offshoot of the Hellfire Club - a secret society of the rich and powerful who assemble to rape, torture and murder - now finally exposed and brought to justice as the locals stormed the house.

Those familiar with the work of Poe through the countless movie adaptations or via many Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Specials will recognise key themes - man's deep-seated pleasure in causing pain, the power relations between the captive and the captors, the hideous pursuit of ever-more innocent victims. Those unfamiliar with the source material may recognise it from the Saw or Hostel movie franchises rather unpleasantly filling multiplexes over this last decade or so.

Played strictly unironically and definitely not for laughs, Goodrum coaxes two sensitive performances from his actors. Ex-Eastender Homer is distraught, but eloquent in his monologues and works sympathetically with the eerily effective lighting, especially prostrate under the eponymous pendulum. Briggs is a reassuringly calm counterpoint to Homer's anguished agonising, if just a little too keen to hear of the prisoner's travails.

Rumpus Theatre's production rescues a gothic horror classic from parody and pastiche, restoring the horrible to the horror. 170 years on from Poe's evoking of the Spanish Inquisition, people trafficking and extraordinary rendition keep the underlying messages of the play uncomfortably close to hand - it is the stuff of our nightmares, but also the stuff of far too many lives.