It starts as a routine day in the aquarium, although the iridescent blue fish does seem startled to find the audience staring in.
When the morning alarm sounds, she bursts into an energetic Michael Jackson routine before breakfasting on a strand of kelp and rapidly having the spectators jumping through hoops, throwing exercise rings and fish food and helping with dropped objects – it’s a lack of hands thing. Playfully blowing bubbles, she explores and is seemingly surprised by the Mirror of Reflection (a goldfish memory, perhaps?) – otherwise she might recall the sign that reads “Don't pull!”.
Finding herself at the seaside she strips off her scaly costume, stuffing her bodysuit to fashion ungainly legs. There are the small issues of being a fish out of water and being unable to walk, but the audience is there to help enthusiastically spritzing with a water spray and helping her to her feet. Walking is learned by example, as is a vocabulary that goes further than “bloop, bloop, pop”. Her speech team soon have her soliloquising Shakespeare, quoting movies, politicians, adverts and musicals before leading a debate on pescatarianism.
She has learned a lot, but by adopting human traits she has also looked again at the Mirror of Reflection. It comes with existential angsts, and she worries about falling in love, winning an Oscar, planes falling from the sky, eating enough fibre, water wars, too many sequels, vanishing whistleblowers, conflict, and people falling asleep dead centre of the front row. Being human isn’t what it was cracked up to be.
The audience will need to help her shed light on why people have the will to go on.
Engaging from the start, she has the audience feeding her fish food and eating out of her hand. This might depend on the number of thespians in the audience, but here members embraced it with chaotic abandon and glee helping to milk applause. Some attempts to meet her initially wordless needs are so ardent that she looks comically anxious.
The journey recalls the emotionally and socially naïve Leelo in Luc Besson’s Fifth Element, where she struggles to communicate and navigate both the beauty and the brutality of modern life, finding redemption not in a philosophical argument but an emotional one.
Funmi Adejobi works hard to make this mix of physical theatre, storytelling, audience interaction, and absurd clowning look easy. The show delves into the immediacy of human connection and is whimsical, witty and captivating, with some emotional kick, but the ending feels a shade too much like group therapy.
It’s slightly choppy and might need a little more time to breathe, but it certainly has legs.
Show Times: 1 to 23 (not 10, 17) August 2025 at 7.35pm.
Tickets: £15 (£10 concessions).
Suitability: 18+ (Note – Show contains mid-show blackouts and audience participation).