Bear Trap Theatre Company’s Bound did something to me that no theatre performance has ever done before. It made me feel seasick. Now although this is not usually the feeling one might crave from going to the theatre it was by no means a negative one. Set in Southwark Playhouse’s atmospheric vaults of London Bridge Rail station, Bound comprises six male actors and very little in the way of set save for a few chairs and a table.
Bound opens to some beautiful sea shanties sung in raw male harmony that echo around the amazing acoustics of The Vaults giving a sense of place and history. The voices drift in gradually from around the space providing an eerie surround-sound sensation. These short yet thrilling pieces of song occur frequently throughout the show to cleverly drive one scene into the next and these transitions left my heart pounding and yearning for the next one.
Writer and Director Jesse Briton has conceived a simple yet effective setting for his testosterone-fuelled play. The six characters are forced onto a dangerous fishing expedition to try to save their company from bankruptcy. From the word go, the men are at each other’s throats and violence threatens at every turn, with a perfect balance of comedy and suspense. Like a bunch of bickering grannies, the trawlers can’t even seem to keep their tempers in a force 10 gale.
Owing to the bare stage, the company uses the space exceptionally well with some excellently complicit physical work to suggest pulling in nets, swaying to the movement of the sea and more. As an audience member you are drawn into the story and are happy to let your mind fill in the blanks of what you cannot actually see. The actors played the thrust stage perfectly and as a side-viewing audience member I felt included in the events on stage at all times. Bound demonstrates how fantastic a studio space can be when used effectively. I am very glad that no one thought to construct a huge fishing boat for the set of this play, as I would hate to have missed out on all the physical energy maintained by the cast’s movement in the space.
The actors, all recent graduates of East 15 Acting School, made for a strong cast of performers with a lot of chemistry between them. Their characters, each bordering on the edge of stereotypes, were played with realism and attention to detail, but some were occasionally let down by dodgy regional accents and slight melodrama. Britton has done well to create such distinct characters and weave their personal histories so cleverly together.
Tragedy looms over this play right from the start with a strong sense of foreboding that you can’t seem to shake off. The audience is taken on a emotional journey of ups and downs to an adequately unpredictable climax. Bound is exciting, scary and laugh-out-loud funny rolled into one, muffled by a blanket of bleakness.
Bound is playing at Southwark Playhouse until 22 October. For more information and to book tickets see the Southwark Playhouse website.
