Review: Bound, Southwark Playhouse

Written for Culture Wars

Jesse Briton was still a student at East 15 when he wrote Bound, a story of six Devonshire trawlermen facing an economy crashing down on them like forty-foot waves. You’d never guess because his debut play is absolutely watertight.

Briton handles dramaturgy like an old pro, exploiting fissures amongst his characterful crew and raising the stakes notch by notch all the way to eleven. That his direction should also achieve atmosphere, elegance and genuine emotion absolutely belies Bound’s grass-roots beginnings. It could easily have come from the pens of Lee Hall or Simon Beaufoy.

Without ever feeling indebted to them, Bound has much in common with both Billy Elliot and The Full Monty. It is a working class drama that shows an unlikely, fractious team struggling together to ward off poverty.

With the recession digging in and his last catch sold off at half-price, Woods (John McKeever), captain of ‘The Violet,’ is unable to pay his crew. Instead, he asks them to sacrifice their leave to take advantage of competition-free waters.

A trip built on such premises, however, is never plain sailing and, sure enough, the weather turns on the trawlermen. Woods is forced to take risks, gambling their safety for economic gain. It’s a neat reflection of the behaviour that caused the global financial crisis, only inverted as result rather than cause. It’s rooted in desperation, rather than greed, seeking survival instead of excess.

Much of Briton’s skill is in the balance of his characters. Young upstart Graham, given a twist of camp metrosexuality by Joe Darke, clashes with Alan Devally’s old-timer. James Crocker’s jaded business-partner John does likewise with his arrogant old friend, Woods, and Thomas Bennett is magnificient as Kerdzic, the Polish agency worker whose mere presence sets tensions running, not least for Daniel Foxsmith’s outspoken Rhys. In such a pressure-cooker environment – cramped, isolated and increasingly dangerous – tempers are bound to flare.

That inevitability is a mark of Bound’s absolute solidity, but it also means it’s incapable of really rocking the boat. Beneath the surface, there’s a familiarity to the narrative structure that leaves pre-emption possible. If anything – and indeed, if possible – Bound is almost too perfect.