Nice Fish

by Mark Rylance, Louis Jenkins

On a frozen Minnesota lake, the ice is beginning to creak and groan. It's the end of the fishing season, and two old friends are out on the ice, angling for something big; something down there that is pure need. Something that might just swallow them whole. In Nice Fish , celebrated actor Mark Rylance draws on his own teenage years in the American Midwest in a unique collaboration with critically-acclaimed Minnesotan contemporary prose poet Louis Jenkins.

Genres: Plays, Poetry

90 pages, Paperback

Published July 31, 2018

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting concept - basically actor Rylance took a bunch of prose poems by Jenkins and fashioned them into a quasi-play. Some of it 'works' - a lot of it just sounds like people reciting poetry. Kinda reminded me of 'A Prairie Home Companion' - has the same Midwestern folksy quality. Fun fact - most people think Rylance is a Brit - but he grew up in Minnesota.

[Michael Meeuwis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yeah, "written by Mark Rylance" one of those things you really shouldn't get excited about--like discovering that Nick Nolte has a range of jams or something. Sub-sub-sub Beckett existential meanderings; some nice observations throughout, but on the whole pretty needless.

[Mindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Mark Rylance as an actor and I could picture him perfectly in the role of Ron, voice and all. I like the prose poetry. Very interesting and something I wasn't familiar with at all. I'm not sure this play would've caught my attention though if it weren't for Mark Rylance.

[Sidni Hendren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this play. I love art that melds two mediums together, in this case Jenkins’ poetry and Rylance’s playwriting. I first read this when I moved to London from Minnesota and I was so excited for my Theatre professor to read it, to say “this is where I’m from, this is what my life is like and this play made it all the way to London too!”

I didn’t expect it to be so funny, the DNR Man is a great character and I laughed out loud at his monologue deeming himself a “Temporary Minor Saint” floating on air, surrounded by a glowing light. How he tries to maintain the rules but just comes off as an annoying buzzkill.

This play was so apt to Minnesota. The wind out of nowhere blowing Ron and Erik across the lake, using a stranger’s sauna not hours after becoming aquatinted, the frustration of just wanting to be out enjoying nature while someone else’s method of enjoyment is blasting music from a warm truck.

Most of all, the feeling that these moments are the meaningless meaning of life. This feeling that runs underneath everything, like a river flowing under a foot of ice.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my introduction to the poetry of Louis Jenkins. Came across it because I follow Mark Rylance and the work he's doing documenting the rages of the Homestead Strike in Pittsburgh. The poems, which make up the bulk of the text in the play, are supremely engaging and deceptively simple. It's easy to miss that they each and all contain life. Not "life" in the abstract i.e. "that was a lively evening" but LIFE. Where we are, what we are, what we were, who'll we'll be is all here in each poem presented with a Minnesotan's loving bemusement. Bad news is that every poem Louis Jenkins would ever write, has been written. But, they have been written.

[Lillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a play that is written in a much different way than I'm used to. Two old friends, Erik and Ron, go ice fishing at the peak when ice fishing season is about to end. Only, they don't just ice fish. Other characters, like the Department of Natural Resources officer, appear out of no where.
Without having much exposure to Midwestern culture, this seems to be very Lake Woebegone mixed with avant-garde theatre. I think reading some poetry by Louis Jenkins, the co-author of Nice Fish, will help to make more sense of the humor involved.