It’s a big year for playwright Richard Bean who has three world premieres opening. He’ll be hoping one of them catches fire and matches the still-glowing flame of 2012 hit, One Man, Two Guvnors, due to arrive to Brighton’s Theatre Royal in December.

Generally positive reviews for his satire about the hacking scandal, Great Britain, have helped it transfer to the West End from the National Theatre.

Made In Dagenham, a musical adaptation of the film directed by Rupert Goold and starring Gemma Arterton, opens at London’s Adelphi Theatre in November.

Pitcairn, detailing how he imagines life might have unravelled for Fletcher Christian and his fellow Bounty mutineers, is his offering at Chichester.

Christian is a romantic hampered by love and a strict moral code living on a false idyll where neither can be maintained. He’s chivvied a group of men into jumping Captain Bligh’s vessel and sailed for the Pacific island of Pitcairn. There they can live “equally”, with their licentious Tahitian locals and male slaves.

In the hands of Tom Morley, the master’s mate is graceful, defiant and credible.

He travels another journey as his enlightenment-era utopian thinking is gradually stripped away and the sailors and their bounty descend into petty arguments, before division and eventually savagery.

It's difficult to surmise a sharper soundbite for the piece than Bean’s own "Lord Of The Flies for grown-ups".

Bean calls it a serious work – and when it is allowed to breathe much of it is – but there is plenty of humour. The former stand-up is a natural gag writer. His bad-breathed sea-shanty singing seamen have a humour as black as their teeth.

Samuel Edward-Cook’s Qunital, an unquestionable bloody bruiser covered in Polynesian body art, dishes out the best of it.

He stands out along with uptight Machiavellian Ned Young, played by Ash Hunter. As does Cassie Layton’s hyper-sexualised Mata, who reflects this set of Tahitians’ obsession with love-making.

She even finds herself under a tree with Hiti (Eben Figueiredo), the innocent young 15-year-old slave, whose implicit deference to authority best reflects the inescapable cultural hierarchies and boundaries, whether that be for empire or religion, which cause such pain.

Like Figueiredo, Layton addresses the audience directly as a narrator. Luckily, both are naturals. But it certainly felt a smidgen awkward (one audience member recoiled in horror when a button was thrust under his nose), as did the contrived haka-style dances.

Still, Pitcairn is a nugget of story, with bags of potential. Bean’s clever plotting makes for a worthwhile and rewarding pay-off, though it needs a tough editor to rattle it through a few more drafts.