There’s plenty of shows in the Adelaide Fringe sea, but the Fringe guide can be as vast an ocean as a dating app, and as hard to navigate where to spend your money and time for fulfilling engagement.
So I feel like I have reeled in something extremely special and rare in the seemingly shallow waters of the small Gallery theatre in the Migration Museum’s Courtyard of Curiosities precinct.
This deceptively small fish of a show from Sydney’s Clockfire Theatre company, is no ‘fish out of water’ on Adelaide’s shores, but rather it has been allowed to marinade from its source, into a richly layered Cotriade fish soup that had me absolutely hooked… line and sinker.
Christopher Carrol finds himself hooked and landed into Emily Ayoub and silent partner Madeleine Baghurst’s small French fishing village convent fever dream. Like a hapless castaway, he must navigate their dominant language, that is not his own, and their devoutly layered bed-boat-kitchen rites of sexy-fishing-soup. He can read their religious text, but will he even become aware fast enough that he may end up being metaphorically gutted?
It won’t make sense until you taste this soup, and this show is the spoon, but don’t expect to be spoon fed. Bring your crustiest baguette brain to this and you will be able to really tear it up, soak into its richly flavoured metaphor, and wipe out the bowl.
A beautiful, well paced, crafted and evolved piece of theatre, driven by committed performances, spiced and seasoned with perfect amounts of lighting and deft sound, I have no notes! the best thing I could hope to see at a fringe, this is entertaining, fulfilling and nourishing 5 Michelin star gastronomic fish soup for the mind, if you allow it to reel you in.
Plenty of Fish in the Sea
The Gallery at The Courtyard of Curiosities at the Migration Museum, 82 Kintore Ave, Adelaide
Performance: Tuesday 27 February 2024
Season continues to 3 March 2024
Bookings: www.adelaidefringe.com.au
Image: Plenty of Fish in the Sea – photo by Geoff Magee
Review: Daniel McInnes