Bear Trap Theatre: Bound
Sarah Lambie
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
An excellent ratchet of tension in a pressure-cooker confined space
GRAHAM TURNER/BEAR TRAP THEATRE
To guarantee a good piece of theatre, you only need a few key elements. This doesn't mean it's easy: truly good theatre is a special thing – but this play, a debut piece by writer/director Jesse Briton, has everything needed to make the kind of theatre I love.
The first key ingredient is a good, strong, clear setting. Set on a fishing trawler off the coast of Devon, the atmosphere for this production is created entirely with a simple wooden floor, some sand, and occasionally a table, chairs and single, swinging lightbulb. Sonically, this setting is added to hugely affectively with a collection of beautiful, guttural, rousing sea-shanties, sung by the cast of six men in the dark through each brief scene change.
The next key ingredient for me is tension: and this environment and these circumstances are absolutely ideal for that. A small trawler, owned by the Skipper and his mate, beleaguered by money trouble and heading into a storm, with six men on board and a host of personal gripes and old wounds. While there is a common purpose driving these men forward – to haul a good catch and save their living – there is also disagreement at almost every turn, because each man is very different to his fellow fishermen, driven by different needs and desires. It's a pressure cooker that pulls the audience in for an unbroken 80 minutes.
Finally, you need humanity. While regularly excited by the glitz and ‘production values’ to be found in huge moving sets and elaborate costumes, all I really want at the heart of any production is the truth and the mess and the imperfection of humanity – and this play has that, with tragedy and comedy, bullish bluster and heartwarming tenderness in equal measure.
This is streamed theatre, and the recording isn't perfect: it was made at the notoriously cavernous and echoey Vault Festival and the sound quality takes some tuning in to – but that can be forgiven as it was made for archive, not public consumption, and it's free. There is also some very dubious ‘map acting’. But this would be an inspirational production to show students how much can be devised with how little.