“THEIR lives were utterly dispensable. This was the most extreme form of capitalism.” As Richard Bean revisits Hull’s “fascinating and esoteric” fishing fraternity in his new play Reykjavik, he is not in two minds about the true source of issues. “They had absolutely no rights whatsoever. They couldn’t go on strike, and they’d be sacked on the spot at the first mention of health and safety.” 

Over six-thousand Hull fishermen have lost their lives at sea since the 1830s, with a particularly rough period during the 1960-70s when several of the port city’s trawlers sank in Atlantic waters, leaving devastation and disillusion back on land. 

As a son of the city Bean feels at home on such ground. “I’d like to be writing about Grenfell, the Post Office or the blood scandal but I don’t have the right to write about those. Fundamentally though, it’s the same thing — money trumping human lives. If you see all of those thousands of fish as ten-pound notes swimming around in the arctic then you really begin to understand the fishing industry.” 

Bean considers the Hampstead Theatre’s current production as the third in a trio of trawler plays that began in 2000 with Unsinkable, broadcast on Radio 3 and continued with Under the Whaleback at the Royal Court Upstairs, which began to establish his name. The trouble with those two earlier efforts according to their author was that “nobody saw them.”  

This time and hopefully with bigger audiences, Bean examines a wide expanse of issues through the eyes of trawler owner Donald Claxton (John Hollingworth). Researching the character, Bean spent time with a former vessel company boss, Jonathan Watson-Hall, at his East Yorkshire estate where he shoots and goes fox hunting. Watson-Hall’s trawler, St Finbarr, caught fire on Christmas Day in 1966, leaving 12 of the 25-strong crew dead. The owner flew out to Newfoundland’s capital, St John’s, to spend a couple of nights with the survivors. 

Bean found Watson-Hall to be “a lovely man” but when pressed on how he copes with such a tragedy he responded with the rather cold refrain, “you learn to harden your heart.” When the playwright enquired on his stay at the St John’s hotel, he said he “didn’t want to talk about it,” adding that the fishermen “got him through it.” You might have expected it to be the other way around, but the blank page left by this phase of the conversation fired the dramatist’s imagination and inspired his latest exploration into these murky depths. 

A thorough and intriguing exploration it is too, with Hollingworth delivering a remarkably commanding performance in the lead role. Alternating on a sixpence from ruthless to tender is a difficult task for an actor but he embodies what Bean cites as the “complex mix of vulnerability” that consumes the Cambridge English literature graduate, Claxton. An early scene where he spars with his self-made father (a steely Paul Hickey), advising him never to “take a piss in the house of a woman you’ve just made a widow” gives us a clear window into his character. 

One of said widows, Lizzie, is loosely based on Lillian Bilocca – the Hull housewife whose dogged campaigning to improve the conditions of the lethal vessels managed to wipe the Vietnam War off the front pages for a period in the late 1960s. 

Bean is a little dismissive of her legacy, saying that despite her work highlighting the dangers of the industry: “It didn’t change a thing. More of the ships got radio operators but all that meant was that when a ship rolled over 20 men died, instead of 19.” The proposition that the Fishermen’s Charter, the result of the fight taken up by Bilocca and her “headscarf revolutionaries,” led to more deaths and not less is one many would disagree with.

Nevertheless, Reykjavik delivers. A plucky ensemble cast bring Bean’s haunting and hilarious text to life against Anna Reid’s stylish epochal sets. 

Next up for the One Man, Two Guvnors penman is an “entirely immersive” trip to the races alongside the renowned director and Bridge Theatre founder, Nicholas Hytner. From the deadly seas to Fontwell racecourse, Richard Bean likes to keep the stakes high. 

Reykjavik runs at the Hampstead Theatre, until November 23. Box office: 020 7722 9301, hampsteadtheatre.com