After an upsetting conversation with her dad, data analyst Lisa Collins flies off on a crucial business trip. On board, she receives information that triggers life and work crises.
Such might be a simple plot precis of A Kettle of Fish. But dramatist Brad Birch is a recipient of the Harold Pinter Commission, and, as in that playwright’s work, there is doubt about whether those mentioned are actual or anecdotal, alive or dead. A fire on which the action turns may be reality, memory, or hallucination, and occurring on Earth or in the sky.
As the production is at the Yard, an enterprising east London venue seeking to develop theatre attractive to the Netflix and podcast generation, form further complicates content. Wendy Kweh delivers a monologue, while a third of the stage is filled with projected images (a magnified fly recurs) and theatregoers hear through headphones an unnerving soundscape (by Max Pappenheim) of street and aerial voices and buzz.
Birch’s work unusually combines experimental shape with journalistic observation, his earlier plays The Brink and Tremor showing the impact on love or work of economic and terrorist tensions. A Kettle of Fish feels like an exploration of the way in which we attempt to make sense of torrential public and private digital information, with the audience processing multiple parallel streams of audio and video data.
Sometimes, our confusion and bemusement feels the fault of the production rather than the culture. But, at its best, this is a verbally and visually unnerving picture of an age defined by anxiety.
A Kettle of Fish is at the Yard, London, until 13 October
