Reviews

Oikos

1 September 2010

The project, more than the play, is the thing. The Jellyfish is a temporary theatre in a school playground built by hordes of volunteers from recycled timber and planks of wood scrounged from markets and classrooms.

Prompted by a public appeal by Red Room, and conceived by German architect and conceptual artist Martin Kalltwasser, the edifice resembles Noah’s Ark designed by John Napier: a big ship of barricaded bits and pieces, like a mad carpenter’s jumble sale.

Inside: a big roomy space with seating for 120 and a new play by Simon Wu that mixes Indian magic realism with fashionable apocalyptic paranoia. Topher Campbell’s production starts incomprehensibly by the Ganges and ends hysterically by the Thames, as rising tides flood the mansion of a City high-flyer (Neil d’Souza) haunted by gods and family tragedy.

His wife and daughter colour in a routine domestic scenario of fear and infidelity (“You leave my mother out of this!” cries Dido Miles as the wife, as if in a West End farce). There are some awful film projections, embarrassing dance routines, a risible plunge pool and a hopeful chorus of “Bring Me Sunshine.” But the outing is fun: next up, before the Jellyfish is dismantled forever, a new play by Kay Adshead.