PLENTY OF FISH IN THE SEA
New Theatre, September 19
Until September 21
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★★
Just when you’re ready to scream at the endless earnest, predictable, naturalistic plays cluttering our stages, along comes Plenty of Fish in the Sea. It’s a timely reminder that theatre need not be so desperate to fulfil its dull aspiration of merely ticking the box marked “relevance”: that there are other fish to fry, if you will; that theatre can also be daring, imaginative and impish.
Plenty of Fish delights with images of such power as to sear your optic nerve, or with constantly surprising and sometimes exhilarating music. It can also trigger uproarious laughter even while it causes you to think.
Madeline Baghurst plays a French nun.Credit: Geoff Magee Photography
A particular strength of the play is that it doesn’t do your thinking for you. It confronts you with images, words, music and metaphors, and you puzzle out your own meaning. You may even decide not to worry whether it’s “about” anything but just ride the waves of wonder and laughter, of surrealism and clowning, and take it all at face value.
It was devised and directed by Clockfire Theatre Company’s Emily Ayoub and Madeline Baghurst, who are joined by Christopher Samuel Carroll to perform it. Baghurst plays a French nun, Ayoub a mute cook, and Carroll, a shipwreck survivor who is reeled in by the nun and then taught to fish. The metaphor lies with dating, specifically online dating, and its addictive potential to want to reel in more and more fish until one is sexually gorged.
Yet with Baghurst exclusively speaking French, Ayoub mute, and Carroll the more passive character, much of the “story” is conveyed by mime, clowning and other physical acting, while the performers endlessly reconfigure a wardrobe, bed and picture frame for scene changes, including one where the bed miraculously becomes a boat.
It can verge on silliness but is predominantly performed with such absolute conviction as to evade that fate and is expertly reinforced by Tobhiyah Stone Feller’s design, Daniel Herten’s music and sound design and Victor Kalka’s exceptional lighting, with Kate Gaul as artistic producer. The upshot is involving, funny and magical.
Lasting just 45 minutes, it has been honed at other fringe festivals until the sound, lights, words and performances are as tight and harmonised as a string quartet. You could see a thousand plays and encounter nothing like this.