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Production Photos: Helen Maybanks

Yellowfin

Flying blind by seeing a play you have no idea about and haven’t read up on is obviously a game of chance, but accompanying two mates to see Marek Horn’s new play ‘Yellowfin’ at Southwark Playhouse last night was an unexpected and thoroughly enjoyable delight.

It might just be me, but if I had been told the play was about three U.S. senators interrogating a smuggler of illegal fish substances I would have turned off completely and missed this winner.

Set in the familiar but not-too-distant future, ‘Yellowfin’ is a slow-release capsule of a not-terribly-fussed world following an inexplicable ecological disaster that, as it happens, turns out to be perfectly manageable.

It takes long and confident strides veering towards nihilism without quite touching it but the real joy is its almost-titillating scepticism of the eco-reorganisationalism that is all the rage now.

If nothing else, ‘Yellowfin’ is a deeply subversive play.


Production Photos: Helen Maybanks

Nancy Crane masters the role of the committee chairwoman whose intelligence never quite matches her confidence. Beside her is Beruce Khan as the smug younger colleague.

Nicholas Day supplies delicious nuggets of comic relief as an elderly senator not entirely sure of his surroundings. (Parallels to the most recent U.S. Senate alum to move into the White House are tempting.)

Joshua James is the fish-smuggling object of their inquiry who breezily pops the bubble of sententious seriousness the senators attempt to bring to the matter at hand.

Good writing, well acted. Let the record show ‘Yellowfin’ is well worth it.

Yellowfin, Southwark Playhouse
£22 (£18 concessions)
Until 6 November 2021

Production Photos: Helen Maybanks
Published at 11:00 am on Wednesday 27 October 2021. Categories: Arts & Culture Errant Thoughts Theatre Tags: .
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