With more and more of us choosing to live on our own in increasingly cramped not to mention costly city apartments, it is littler wonder that levels of isolation and loneliness are reportedly on the rise as our desire for independence makes a sense of belonging and community harder to come by.
Against such a despairing backdrop comes Le Fils du Grand Réseau and Stories in Theatre’s wordless wonder Fishbowl, which as a recipient of the 2017 Molière Award for Best Comedy Play suggests is a hoot and half.
Under a cloudless blue sky which quickly darkens into a thunderous downpour, three singletons trudge up a steep staircase to their respective attic flats. To the left, a whiter than white clinical pod replete with gadgets and gizmos including a clap-operated crapper. To the right, a pink oasis of calm into which the sole female tries her hand with decreasing levels of success as a chiropractor, hair (un)dresser and long-needled phlebotomist. And wedged in the middle, with nothing but paper-thin walls and a droning radio to drown out the screech of karaoke and thud of headboards, a klutz in a clutter of boxes.
The wording on three of them echoing their collective fate: “fragile” denoting their vulnerability and disconnect; “toys” their childlike innocence and fun; and an inverted “this way up” the chaotic reality of what happens to them when, in the words of John Lennon, they’re “busy making other plans”.
Over 75 glorious minutes of continually chucklesome and frequently belly laugh-inducing slapstick, the three characters played with an incredible lightness of touch by the show’s creators Agathe L’Huillier, Olivier Martin Salvan and Le Fils du Grand Réseau founder Pierre Guillois risk if not life, certainly limb, as they emerge from their cocoons and dare to connect – but through a combination of misunderstandings, miscalculations and downright bad luck more often than not fail.
The mirror of life as presented by director Pierre Guillois may be comically smeared, but it is nonetheless touching, hilarious and closer to reality than we dare to admit.
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