On first impressions, Rogue Production’s adaptation of Go Fish! doesn’t look much like the 1994 film. The play transforms the film’s black and white Chicago background into a simple, in-the-round living room setting, with Maria Beltechi’s beautiful patchwork backcloth framing the stage. Though aesthetically more vibrant, this adaptation is quieter, stiller, and perhaps more contemplative.
Go Fish! follows Max, a young lesbian attempting to navigate the dating scene. With the help of her friends, she meets Ely, a woman initially outside her type. Despite doubts and obstacles, a budding romance is sparked, set to a backdrop of a vibrant lesbian community in all its complexities. The play opened looking less like a piece of theatre and more like a lecture, as Kia (Jumoke Sosan) delivered a brief outline of the story’s raison d’être: we cannot understand what it is to be a queer woman, without really looking at their everyday lives. The play maintained this contemplative tone throughout, with the ensemble characters meditating on the story’s narrative, wondering how we might get to a resolution, or if the plot might veer off into familiar cliché. At points, this detracted a little from the story. It was noticeable that very few scenes in Go Fish! were much longer than thirty seconds, many of these consisting only of awkward introductions and farewells. This did have the tendency to prevent any sense of narrative flow, and made proper engagement with the characters, which the production itself claimed to emphasise, at times difficult.
Yet even so, parts of Charlotte Oswell and Maria Beltechi’s reworking shone. Izzy Lever was brilliant in the lead role of Max, depicting a combination of yearning and hopeless apathy with skill. Jumoke Sosan also delivered a standout performance, full of charisma and stage presence, bringing confidence to the more (intentionally) awkward scenes. The script in particular stood out in the livelier scenes: a houseparty with the entire cast had a certain warmth and homeliness which I have found rare in student theatre, making perfect use of the production’s intimate in-the-round staging, and doing much to justify the decision for a quieter reworking of the original film. Likewise, the rejection of Evy (Antonia Anstatt), Kia’s girlfriend, by her unaccepting parents was made powerful through the decision to present mother and father as blank monoliths, heard only in voiceover. This centring of Evy’s experience was both innovative and heartbreaking in a manner only theatre can quite be.
Go Fish! was an enjoyable watch, and it is encouraging to see new writing take on reworkings of cult classic films. With megastars such as Chappell Roan, Renée Rapp and Billie Eilish, we are in a golden era for queer female presence in pop culture: Go Fish! was certainly a deserving and important addition to the Oxford student theatre offering for this term.