Nice Fish

Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis

(612) 377-2224

**

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At the very least, this play’s got “ample whimsy,” said Dominic P. Papatola in the St. Paul, Minn., Pioneer Press. A collaboration between Tony-winning actor Mark Rylance and Duluth poet Louis Jenkins, it uses ice fishing as a metaphor for life as two buddies—played by Rylance and Jim Lichtscheidl—aim to hook one last big one before the season ends. As the two sit on a frozen lake ruminating on matters big and small, “Jenkins’s poems comprise the bulk of the piece,” at least until the friends are visited by a park ranger and, more surreally, a Norse goddess and her snowmobiling boyfriend. Unfortunately, “floating on a cloud of images and ideas is a levitating act that can take you only so far” before you start to crave a story. There’s simply “not enough narrative” in Nice Fish. It “calls to mind a charming dinner guest who lingers one glass of wine longer than you’d like.”

Certain scenes “scream to be trimmed,” said Graydon Royce in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. And just when you think the play is climaxing, “it drifts aimlessly” into new territory. Yet in a show that examines the messiness of life, “this sprawling mayhem is, in effect, the message.” Nice Fish isn’t for everyone, but it “amazes with its bravery.” Think of it as a late-season snowstorm: “We can either shut ourselves away from it, or run outside for one last winter romp.”