Photos © Bob Seary.
From an event unimaginable comes a play full of imagination, GODS AND LITTLE FISHES.
Recipient of The Silver Gull Play Award for 2020, GODS AND LITTLE FISHES receives its world premier at New Theatre with an engaging production directed by one its writers, Richard Sydenham and featuring its co-author, Jamie Oxenbould.
Oxenbould plays Frank, adrift on a raft with three others, performers at play in some ritual Frank is invited to participate in. One French caricature, one flatulent clown and one philosophical actor form a trio of rescuers, figments of imagination keeping him afloat, to survive the emotional shipwreck that has capsized his life.
There is clowning, there is antic, there are puns there are fart jokes. It’s terrific ensemble work from Arky Michael, Andy McDonell and Eloise Snape as the coping aid mechanicals in this kidnapper blight’s dream.
And there’s fine support work from Katie Fitchett as Frank’s wife and Sarah-Jane Kelly as his son as well as the ominous, hovering, black hatted spectre of Sydenham.
GODS AND LITTLE FISHES seems to be a play whose intention is to stop you talking not to start you talking, yet there is still loads about the play and this production worth talking about.
Based on a notorious kidnapping murder case in Sydney some sixty years ago, the play is not a plodding police procedural but a journey through grief and disbelief.
Hannah Tayler’s set design is pure and simple magic complete with Narnia cupboards, mashed potato clouds and plush red curtain, safe fantasy taking centre stage, reality on the periphery.
Katie Fitchette’s costume design is a vaudeville delight leavened with fetching Fifties fashion.
Often, when a play script wins an award it enters the doldrums of the unproduced, moored to the page and not let set sail on the stage. Kudos to New Theatre for not only taking over The Silver Gull Award, an initiative of Subtle Nuance Theatre, but for further fostering its function by mounting a fully fledged production.
Thu – Sat 7:30pm, Sun 5pm
Final performance Sat 25 Jun 2pm
Running time 70 mins, no interval