Review: Bundled by Jamie McLeish & Lynne Patrick at Customs House, South Shields

Invited: Reviewed by Stephen Stokoe 09 September 2026

This is the fourth year that Customs House has been running the annual First Play Club which ‘…offers creatives of all ages the opportunity to come together and develop their first professional credit…’ and I think I have been present for the last three years. It is a superb initiative and introduces some amazing productions to the welcoming stage oat the Customs House.

Bundled is a tense dramedy in which pretty much everything happens all at once. It weaves the dramatic action into some deliciously funny word play and comedy moments while the action rumbles along at a fair pace to an unexpected yet curiously satisfying conclusion.

Director Steve Gilroy’s minimalist set choices really allow the actors to fill the space and this works really well. There are four distinct locations. A restaurant, brightly lit and airy, a bus stop dark and foreboding, a comforting brightly lit living room, and a much more claustrophobic room in the same house as the living room. It may have been upstairs or the cellar, the viewer is left to interpret it as they will. The lighting state reflected the action and Cameron Turnbull has done a masterful job in his design. The sound courtesy of Jackson Beal was also superb even before the show began with a soudscape that slightly jarred giving a ‘not quite right’ foreboding from the off. Clever stuff indeed.

We meet three of the five actors in the first scene. Cookie (Dean Logan) is a full of himself lout who obviously has a chequered past when it comes to understanding the notion of consent and boundaries and Dipper (Mitchell Wilson) is his, for want of a better word, dippy younger and impressionable sidekick. Unlike his character in Jamie Eastlake’s theatre adaptation of the movie Purely Belter, there is very little to like about Cookie and Logan pitches it perfectly. He’s a lout, a loser, a bully, and a creep. This is juxtaposed brilliantly by the quite adorably dim, Dipper, perfectly portrayed by Wilson.

True to his character, Cookie makes a play for his waitress for the evening Becky (Amy Cameron) who quite powerfully bats of the unwanted attention. Once outside the comfort of her workplace, however, she is much less confident and as the seemingly emboldened Cookie approaches her once more we see a very uncomforatble scene play out as Cookie makes his intentions more than clear.

That is until a hero arrives in the form of Becky’s former high school friend Nate (Davey Hopper) to save the day – just in time – it would seem.

The writers have cleverly woven together a story which keeps you guessing right to the end and as I have already mentioned the end does leave you satisfied but that is as far as I am going to divulge about the storyline itself.

The performances are exceptional. I really like Wilson’s Dipper and his consistency was to his particular credit. It was great to see Davey Hopper back on the stage at Customs House and he played the complex character of Nate with nuance, sneer, and more than a little seasoning of threat with the ease of an accomplished performer.

Cameron is also comfortable playing a character who ducks, dives, and pivots through a story in which she must use all her knowledge and womanly wiles to navigate her way through her predicament. She does this effortlessly goading, pleading, and deceiving the other characters. Superb characterisation.

Late in the proceedings we get a brief but memorable appearance from Becky’s mother, Jackie (Stephanie Putson) who simply commands the stage from the moment she enters. Both character and actress are a force to be reckoned with and Putson’s comedy timing was spot on.

Bundled is a thoroughly enjoyable one-act play with twists and turns that really keep the audience guessing. There are some great one-liners for each of the characters to deliver and a fair amount of laughs. There are dark themes in this play which runs for just over an hour including male toxicity, social deprivation, kidnapping, and potential (and actual) physical harm. That the audience come out of the theatre smiling and laughing is a credit to the writing team of McLeish and Patrick and I look forward to seeing their subsequent work. I would suggest that there is more than enough questions left to be answered in this play to fashion Bundled: The Revenge!

Bundled plays at Customs House, South Shields until Friday 11^th September.

https://www.customshouse.co.uk/theatre/bundled