Review: FISH BOWL, Compagnie le Fils du Grand Réseau - Peacock Theatre
Photo credit: Fabienne Rappeneau
Fish Bowl is a physical theatre work rooted in the lineage of European clowning and visual comedy, drawing on traditions of silent cinema and devised ensemble performance. Created by the French company le Fils du Grand Réseau, written and directed by Pierre Guillois with Agathe L’Huillier and Olivier Martin-Salvan, the production arrives at Sadler’s Wells Peacock Theatre as part of MimeLondon, having first established itself as a Fringe success. Rather than losing intimacy on a larger stage, it leans into scale with confidence, without sacrificing the very human experience at its core.
The premise places three neighbours side by side in housing so tight it feels as though they are living on top of one another, a distinctly Parisian chambre de bonne sensibility. Each character is defined by a particular vulnerability, each uniquely prone to mishap. The gadget-obsessed man who likes clean order, the eclectic, untidy neighbour, and the well-intentioned but misguided woman seeking herself through new hobbies. What unfolds is a chain reaction of accidents and near-disasters within their quotidian domestic lives: a world where the everyday becomes unstable, and small actions carry hilariously disproportionate consequences.
The dominant force of Fish Bowl is how comedy snowballs. Drawing on a lazzi-like structure, small moments accumulate with precision: a dropped object, a misunderstood gesture, a beat held just a fraction too long. Each becomes the seed for something larger, more chaotic, more absurd. The pleasure lies in watching inevitability of misfortune take shape. Yet beneath the laughs, a darker undercurrent runs steadily through the work. What begins as mundane domestic life gradually tilts toward something bleaker: isolation, loneliness, frustration, the feeling of being trapped inside one’s own habits. The piece never abandons humour or lingers in sentimentality and often leans unapologetically into literal toilet humour, but beneath the comedy sits something recognisably human. Messy, unkempt, and quietly raw. Simplicity is part of its charm, and the reason it manages to be simultaneously moving and leave us in stitches. In the collisions between sincerity and absurdity, Fish Bowl reveals its intelligence.
The performers/creators work within the physical parameters they have set for themselves, committing fully to the logic of this miniature non-verbal world. All three are brilliant, holding the space both individually and as an ensemble. There is complete conviction in the physical language. Every interaction with an object, every shift or pause, carries meaning. Story is communicated without explanation; intention, frustration and longing are read through movement alone. The absence of speech is not a limitation, but revealing.
The set is both functional and busy, vividly describing the lives of the three characters while also acting as their antagonist. A fragile architectural feat, it invites carnage and allows visual trickery and special effects to appear deceptively simple. Objects slip, leak and collapse. There is blood, filth, friendship, and a blue fish. The scenography, designed by Laura Léonard, with construction by Atelier JIPANCO and the technical team at Le Quartz, Scène nationale de Brest, is woven directly into the action rather than layered on top of it, allowing mess and imperfection to remain visible and meaningful.
Fish Bowl succeeds by creating farce from something deeply familiar. When we are alone, when no one is watching, we are chaotic, uncontained, ungraceful. The work reveals how fragile we are, and how funny that fragility can be.
**** Four stars
Reviewed by: Stephanie Osztreicher
Fish Bowl plays at Sadler’s Wells’ Peacock Theatre until 31 January, with further info here.
