FISHBOWL. To 23 October.

London

FISHBOWL
by Ignacio Apolo translated by Marlene Ramirez-Cancio

Theatre 503 Latchmere Pub 503 Battersea Park Road SW11 3BW To 23 October 2004
Tue-Sat 8pm Sun 5pm
Runs 1hr 25min No interval

TICKETS: 020 7978 7040
Review: Timothy Ramsden 10 October

Themes without sufficient drama and a situation dragged unconvincingly out.This is an award-winning play by a Buenos Aires playwright who has been working with London's Royal Court and National Studio. It's an impressive CV but a far less impressive play. A playwright can, of course, invent any world they wish scrupulously realistic, entirely fanciful or a mixture; so long as the ground-rules become clear. We need to know, at least eventually, where we stand in order to evaluate the theatrical experience.

Fishbowl opens with two teenage schoolboys salivating over sandwiches. They seem to be in a disused room at school where a crack in the wall opens on to female toilets. There they observe the infrequent users in fact, only one woman apparently uses these facilities and it happens to be the (presumably) teacher they fantasise around. They salivate over, and plan a sexual assault on, her.

Maybe they carry it out, though its existence and severity depends on which you believe (if either) as they recall the detail. They seem able to carry out this assault with impunity, then simply carry on hiding for days, no-one aware of their existence, dining on a couple of chocolate rolls and a fruit-flavoured drink. One seemingly locks the other in as the relationship takes on a sexual and violent element.

Plenty of themes here, but despite technically assured, sympathetic performances the action in Paul Higgins' production lacks either a metaphoric dimension or the specifics suggested by the school blazers. It comes over as a wearisome plugging away at a single situation, extended for thematic rather than dramatic reasons. trapping us with two volatile minds that are only fitfully made interesting. Even the power games and revelation of unspoken or denied desires through action (there's a lot of homophobic talk near the start that has implications later on) does not develop organically.

The title provides a neat irony; these secretive boys are opened to inspection. But, deprived of reality without the vivid creation of an unreal world, and without the script giving the characters or their actions a coherent development, this piece remains in an unsatisfactory dramatic limbo.

Leto: Alex Waldmann
Fish: Kevin Trainor

Director: Paul Higgins
Designer: Belle Mundy
Lighting: Phil Hewitt
Composer: Neil McArthur
Singer: Claire Moore
Assistant director: Will Hammond

2004-10-15 23:27:47