Nice Fish NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (63)
See it if you like Mark Rylance (and who doesn't?). This is an original, quirky productions that is thought-provoking and existential, yet endearing.
Don't see it if you are drawn to plot-driven, literal, classical theater. This play is experiential and thought-provoking. However, it is fun to watch.
See it if you can't miss anything Mark Rylance does and you have a great affinity for whimsy.
Don't see it if you need a story and characters to hook into for an hour and forty five minute swim upstream.
See it if you don't like Mark Rylance and want to have a glimpse at his mind.
Don't see it if you like a play with clear storyline.
See it if You enjoy a cerebral, poetic experience. Nihilism has never felt so positive or uplifting. If you like Waiting for Godot you'll feel at home
Don't see it if You just want to watch a story. Where things happen. Or get frustrated when things don't make sense.
See it if You enjoy new, quirky plays
Don't see it if You don't like fish
See it if you like mark rylance, who is an absolute treasure; if you are up for a witty, gently philosophical but very funny meditation on ... life.
Don't see it if you want action, DRAMA, music, or a fluffy show that won't challenge you or ask you to think.
See it if you love visual and sound poetry, intelligent and subversive humor and Mark Rylance!
Don't see it if you look for linearity or definitiveness in storytelling
See it if you're fishing for whimsical entertainment that evokes a state of mind & offers insight into the leanings of legend in the making Rylance.
Don't see it if you think a play without a plot & character development wears out its welcome faster than yesterday's fish.
Critic Reviews (31)
"The effort resembles a weird hybrid of Samuel Beckett and 'Avenue Q' but without the music. There’s also no music in Jenkins’s poetry...What’s learned here is not unlike the lessons told late at night by that depressed student down the hallway in your college dorm. Near the end of the play [director] van Kampen pulls so many stunts out of her directorial bag of tricks — people breaking through the ice, stagehands clearing the set, big fish wiggling — that she ends up lampooning the material."
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"Surprisingly charming play...you should get your butt out there to see it...I would have thought that Rylance had devoted his entire career to honing the superb comedic chops he displays here. The rest of the cast ain't bad either and special kudos have to go to Todd Rosenthal for the wittiest set design I've seen in a long time."
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"As they pass the time, ruminating on life and fishing, Claire van Kampen’s production starts to feel a bit like 'Waiting for Godot' on ice, with similar shafts of desperate humour and rueful reflections on the pointlessness of life...It's not much of a play, to be honest, but as a chance to relish the sublime eccentric charms of Rylance at his best, it's a hoot."
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"A self-indulgent boondoggle (be it on a modest scale). The main problem is Jenkins’s prose poems…Such whimsy is charming in small doses but becomes repetitive...Rylance’s puckish mien and sing-song Wisconsin accent admittedly keep much of the audience chortling along throughout. But only in his interactions with a drolly officious DNR officer does the comedy rise above vaudeville...'Nice Fish' feels like an extended workshop that never really came together."
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"The ice may be groaning on the frozen Minnesota lake where Mark Rylance and Jim Lichtscheidl are mulling life’s mysteries, but the dialogue is solid and crisp... if sometimes as rascally as a sturgeon with zero interest in your bait and tackle...Rylance's work here is no fish story...'Nice Fish' doesn’t have an urban sensibility that will be instantly appealing to New York theatergoers, but on the other hand, it’s nice to get out of town at this time of year, isn’t it?"
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"Written by Rylance and Jenkins, 'Nice Fish' draws heavily on the poet's work. It's a theatrical experiment, an existential poem, that takes place in the flat, almost featureless landscape of a frozen lake in Minnesota...All the giddy silliness has a point — life is unpredictable and weird and often formless. Erik and Ron are afloat on an ice floe...They bravely face life's futility with jokes, thoughtful observations, and the desire to simply catch a nice fish."
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"Part oddball bromance, part poetic meditation, part talking diorama, the unevenly charming concoction follows a pair of dudes as they spend the day fishing on a frozen lake...As the piece unfolds, lacking the armature of narrative development, Rylance, Jenkins, and van Kampen resort to increasingly surreal antics in the interest, it seems, of keeping our attention...There's a lot of beauty here, but in theater, as in fishing, it pays to be patient."
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"If the prose poem format, the wandering thought lines, enchants you, then 'Nice Fish' is quietly wonderful. If you enjoy laughing at humor both sly and obvious, then 'Nice Fish' is loudly wonderful...The two men are amazing...'Nice Fish' is funny and silly and touching. It slyly delivers laughs along with insights, so you never feel like you're being lectured or on the lookout for the 'big answers'...The director is quite comfortable letting the prose set the pace of the piece."
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