Hugh Jackman - rugged, charismatic, he's The Man. Put him on a stage, and they will come. In The River at the Circle in the Square, audiences fill seats and stand in the back to look and listen as he waxes poetically about fish and love, or the search for both. They watch as he prepares a fish on stage. The Woman (Cush Junbo) caught it, but The Man guts and fillets it, chops the vegetables, and places it lovingly in a roasting pan for the evening meal. Is there more to this enigmatic play by Jez Butterworth (Jerusalem) than a man loving to fish?
The Man lives in a remote cabin on the cliffs, and, on a moonless night, invites a woman who thinks he loves her, and so do we. Then she leaves the stage, and the story continues with the entrance of The Other Woman (Laura Donnelly). The two women never share the stage and look quite different, and each has been influenced by previous women invited to his cabin.
The women are not interested in fish, only in gaining The Man's love and attention, something he talks about but does not seem to give easily. Which, if either, is his true love, and is this small, taut 85-minute play about one man or about all of us, trying to recapture a lost love or a loss of one's self?
Or is it perhaps a search for wisdom? In Celtic mythology, fish is a vehicle of wisdom, and by eating the fish, one can acquire its knowledge. There is a also moment of possible wrongdoing, when The Man calls the police to report a missing woman. Butterworth is not spelling out anything, so you can't be certain if this play is allegorical, Gothic, or melodramatic and after awhile, who cares? Staging by Ultz provides an atmosphere of mystery and tension with Charles Balfour's atmospheric lighting and intriguing night sounds by Ian Dickinson. Directed by Ian Rickson, the momentum is strong, and the performances are persuasive, Jackman nuanced with control. His narrative of catching and losing his first fish at age seven is riveting. A clue is offered at the end, when offstage, a voice sings, “Song of the Wandering Aengus” by William Butler Yeats centering on a "little silver trout” that becomes “a glimmering girl with apple blossoms in her hair." The Man will probably continue casting for his dreams of youth and fulfillment without any big catch at the end. Later, you might choose to ponder about all this, but odds on, you would not bother if Hugh Jackman were not The Man.
