Words: Natasha Chanse

Trunk Theatre Project’s performance, Blub Blub, will feel unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, but also comfortingly reminiscent of your primary school theatre productions.

Set within an aquarium, the show follows two fish as they endeavour to escape from their confinements. The performance is a delightfully creative execution of an endearingly simple plot, achieved by inventive means. The homemade, garishly bedazzled hats may at first seem a weak attempt at resembling a fish tail, but reality is suspended when the spotlight casts a perfect fish silhouette upon the wall. The bubble machine-cum-cigarette brings a perfectly distilled comedic touch, and the glass walls of the bowl are built in our imaginations by a single note on the xylophone whenever the characters make contact.

Another tool actively utilised in this performance is the human body – the sense of hope, desperation and urgency is captured by the inhabitants jumping on a trampoline for minutes at a time as they attempt to hop over.

The script isn’t the star of the show, with the dialogue between the two performers mostly just consisting of bickering. However, their lamentation for the politics of being the ‘little guys’ at the mercy of their human captor is touching, and the appearance of the fish net at the show’s close can bring a tear to the eye. Ultimately, Blub Blub is testimony to and celebration of the power of imagination, and demonstrates the limitless ways that art can achieve escapism. 

Blub Blub
Summerhall, Cairns Lecture Theatre
14.00
18-20, 22-27 Aug