Theatre in Review: Nice Fish (St. Ann's Warehouse)

	Mark Rylance. Photo: Teddy Wolff

The love affair between Mark Rylance and the New York theatre has been an ardent one, for good reason, but, with Nice Fish, the relationship may be entering a period of strain. Rylance has given us so many magnificent things that I guess we should allow him his little indulgences, but your ability to enjoy his latest vehicle will depend on your tolerance for a plotless evening of Upper Midwestern wryness of the sort that makes Garrison Keillor look like Louis C.K.

The script of Nice Fish, by Rylance and Louis Jenkins, has been cobbled together from Jenkins' prose poems. (Theatre fans will recall how, a few years back, Rylance bypassed the usual thank-yous at the Tony and Drama Desk Awards, quoting instead one of Jenkins' poems, leaving audiences baffled.) Rylance and Jim Lichtscheidl are Ron and Erik, a couple of guys enjoying a little ice fishing on the last day of the season. Whatever else one might want to say about Nice Fish, it is stunningly designed, beginning with Todd Rosenthal's set, a vast expanse of frozen lake that practically thrusts into the auditorium, dotted with a tiny building or two, and, in the distance, an array of trees. The set is backed by a vertically curved cyc on which the lighting designer, Japhy Weideman, creates a series of gorgeous sky looks, including a Technicolor sunset and an assemblage of clouds that one character describes as being the color of jaundice.

The first twenty minutes or so contains some priceless bits, most of them courtesy of Rylance, who may be the finest exponent of the comedy of haplessness since Stan Laurel hung up his bowler hat. He offers a brief lecture on the importance of having a cell phone, then accidentally drops his phone into the hole he has cut out of the ice; his sunglasses quickly follow. It's a perfectly executed gag. The sight of him wrestling with a tent that refuses to be put up is pretty treasurable, too, as is a brief tableau of him and Lichtscheidl blown sideways during a winter blast. And Rylance's list of all the exciting upcoming events in the area -- including the Blackfly Festival, Finn Fest, the Five-Mile-Long Rummage Sale, Modern Dance on the Bridge, and the Polka Mass, among others, is a gem of deadpan comedy. An encounter with a strictly by-the-rules cop, played by Bob Davis, is an amusing exercise in hair-splitting legal interpretations and passive-aggressive communication.

About a quarter of the way in, however, one realizes that there is no main event, dramatically speaking, that the entire evening is designed to be a vehicle for Jenkins' prose poem, which treats many of life's mundane details with a humor as flat as a Midwestern vowel. If short paragraphs shorn of rhyme, meter, or scansion can be called light verse, Jenkins' work certainly qualifies: He composes whimsical little episodes, many of them featuring O.Henry twists. Rylance delivers a piece about a former love, ending with her complaining that she can't handle his smothering attention. He responds, "What are you talking about? We only met an hour ago!" Erik tells of a visit to his ancestral home; after lovingly describing several relatives, he realizes that they have arrived at the wrong house. He declines to move on to the real family, deciding that one reunion was enough. Occasionally, a line grabs one's attention ("Most of us live out our lives on the edge of something: bankruptcy, greatness, sanity..."), but overall, the script works the cliché of the taciturn Midwesterner to death.

Rylance and Lichtscheidl mine the understated wit in these passages well enough to keep one's attention. But the arrival of Flo, a young lady who hangs out in the nearby ice house, and her uncle, Wayne, only adds bodies and length to the production. Neither Kayli Carter, as Flo, nor Raye Birk, stepping into the role of Wayne for Jenkins, can make much out of the poems assigned to them, although Carter sings sweetly, and, with their appearance, Rylance slips into the background. It is around this point that Nice Fish completes its journey from amusing to bemusing to interminable.

At least Claire van Kampen's direction maintains a light touch, and the design credits -- including the layers of insulated clothing by Ilona Somogyi and the winter storms and cracking ice effects by the sound designer, Scott W. Edwards, are first rate. I will add that many in the audience at the performance I attended seemed to enjoy Nice Fish -- "It's just like Beckett, only lighter and funnier," a man leaving the theatre told his companion. I'm not really sure what this means, but it did make me sorry not to have seen Rylance in Waiting for Godot; he must have brought an incomparable sense of comedy to Beckett's text.<> The good news is that Rylance is already booked to return next season in a real play (Farinelli and the King, a hit in London), so we can all look forward to that. Meanwhile, for hard-core Rylance fans, there is Nice Fish, which is passable entertainment, I guess, as long you understand that, this season, a great artist has chosen to put his talent on ice. -- David Barbour