Fishbowl

Agathe L'Huillier, Pierre Guillois and Olivier Martin-Salvan
SIT Productions / Les Fils Du Grand Reseau
Pleasance Courtyard

Fishbowl

Winner of France’s Molière Award for Best Comedy Play 2017, this show is set in the attic bedsits of Paris and draws upon the experiences of writers Agathe L'Huillier, Pierre Guillois and Olivier Martin-Salvan as well as many other anecdotes picked up along the way during their research.

These attic rooms in Paris were originally built in the 20th century to house the servants of wealthy families. In more recent history, these tiny spaces have become the favoured housing of students looking to keep a roof over their heads in the notoriously expensive city.

So the set is a brilliant depiction of three small living spaces that mirror their occupants personalities: an all-white minimalist space for a clean-freak male office worker, a messy cluttered space for a scruffy male hoarder and a pretty-in-pink female space for the young accident-prone girl who has a tendency to mess up the lives of those she touches. Three lonely misfits rubbing along side by side who somehow learn to fit together.

There is no dialogue as such but, drawing on the physical comedy of Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, this play consists of a series of very clever and very funny vignettes from their lives exploring the changing relationships and dynamics between the three of them as they have corridor disco parties, scraps over lack of space and the female tries out her dubious learnt-from-a-book beauty skills on the men. They sunbathe, fall off roofs, cook accidental stews and generally live out their lives in a touching, muddled but very believable way.

There is a great backing soundtrack and lots of slapstick humour, but vegans be warned: a fish and a rabbit die a horrible death!

It maybe goes on about ten minutes too long, but it is an incredible piece of theatre and one I would urge you to go and see.

Reviewer: Suzanne Hawkes

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