Best of 2012-2013: The sweet surprise of 'Nice Fish'

Editorial
The theater lights come up on a tiny puppet figure in the vast expanse of stage. A little man casts out a line. He is ice fishing. The audience strains to see the small figure, breath held, enraptured in the little puppet man. His silhouette against the snowy expanse expresses a common theme of humanity; we are so small against the world. PLAYFUL Todd Rosenthal delivered a truly delightful set design in both content and scale. At moments I felt like I had been dropped into a model train set – but on a frozen lake. In an evening ice fishing scene, miniature ice huts lit up on the stage horizon while remote control pickup trucks drove across the upstage tundra. There was a pink yard flamingo sculpted to the inside of the sauna/ice hut door alongside a Tropicana poster. An upstage scrim exactly captured the unpredictable changes in weather as we watched a storm sail in, and the scrim darken with heaviness. Mimi Jordan Sherin’s lighting design was spectacular. I couldn’t perceive the changes as they happened, just that they had occurred. At the top of the show, there were a series of stop-motion-type blackouts. We saw "snapshots" of the characters and their gear being blown about by a fierce wind. Coolers go flying, a warming tent topples over, one fisherman is seemingly lifted by a gust. The wind sequence had a vaudevillian comedy to it. I thought I could see Assistant Director Jon Ferguson’s everyman, clownish influence in the piece, and I was delighted. Even the last line is playful: "I didn't get it, honey, did you?" EVERYONE gets that line. This line summed up the whole experience, playful and irreverent and very very imperfectly human. CONNECTION There was a group of older men and their wives sitting directly behind us. I LOVED listening to their laughter, their connection to the play. Of course they enjoyed it! It’s a play about two old men ice fishing, and their delight and surprise was part of my enjoyment. I commend the Guthrie for taking a risk and trusting that audiences would connect, laugh, share and delight together. As I settled into my seat after intermission, I felt connected to the imperfections of humanity. Perhaps the humor of Act I had opened me up, or the delight at a puppet sensibility woven in to the set design. My favorite theater shows tend to have cheeky characters, are not overly polished, and celebrate the folly of being human. Nice Fish delivered a nice surprise on all accounts.
Headshot of Shannon Forney
Shannon Forney
Arts Administrator. Buddhist Clown. Optimist. Outrageously Curious. Shannon Forney is a program director at the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council in Saint Paul. Her art training is in physical theater, puppetry, and red nose clown.