Go Fish started life as a 1994 ultra-low-budget American movie about women meeting women. Think Clerks but with heart instead of balls. It’s funny, honest, straight-talking, and heart-warmingly tactile – full of hands clasping, toes touching and lips brushing. Although it didn’t make much of a splash when set against 1994’s other big gay films (Interview with the Vampire, Shallow Grave, Heavenly Creatures to name but three) it’s a milestone in that, unlike those movies, its sexuality was not buried in subtext, but presented openly as everyday life.
Where other films were still smuggling homosexuality into their hetero audience’s heads under cover of metaphor, Go Fish had the courage to play its queerness absolutely… straight.
Now, thirty years later, Charlotte Oswell has lovingly adapted Go Fish for the theatre, and it still feels rare to see the lesbian community depicted on stage. For that reason, this play is both welcome and vital.
Oxford students, by the way, regularly depict plays with lesbian relationships. Within the last two years we’ve seen Wishbone, Every Brilliant Thing, The Great Gatsby, Having the Last Word, and The Pact, all either adapted or originally created to foreground a lesbian relationship. What makes Go Fish special is the way it presents a community, not an exceptional and rare couple.
At the heart of the story is Max, a twitchy, witty, hyper-self-critical individual with so much love to give but no one to give it to. Portrayed by the peerless Isabelle Lever, Max is a force of Nature. Their opening monologue, prefiguring the arc of an entire, fictitious, doomed relationship, is one of the high points of the evening. Max meets the less dynamic but much more grounded Ely, and we – along with all of their friends, and they themselves if they’re being honest – know that they will end up together.
So Go Fish is a simple love story. It isn’t overtly political. The word ‘rights’ never appears (but ‘tea’ is mentioned a lot). This isn’t so much Dykes to Watch Out For as Dykes to Stay In With. It’s designed as a feelgood show, and it succeeds in making you feel good: warm, cuddly and full of affection.
Where it is less successful is in the translation from screen to stage. The challenge for any writer adapting from one medium to the other is to find a way of making their play look ‘dramatic’ in the stage sense of the word. Although there are some lovely set-pieces here (especially the scene in which SPOILER Max and Ely first kiss) there are also lots of brief scenes followed by blackouts that feel like they should have stayed in the cinema. On stage, short scenes often slow things down as the audience becomes aware of the sequence of blackouts filled with shuffling feet.
One other element in short supply is intimacy. The occasional kisses are welcome, but the original film is full of tangible expression, and on stage those constant little demonstrations of closeness feel unduly rationed, like wartime butter. Given the promiscuity of some of the characters, and their natural ease in each others’ company, it is odd to see them being so physically hesitant. Holding hands, lying with their head in someone else’s lap, even just leaning against each other, would be a more natural way for these friends to hang out than sitting in circles separated by air-filled space. Towards the end, they all cram together on the sofa, and suddenly they feel like what they are: women who trust each other both mentally and physically.
These points aside, Oswell’s production is a special experience to cherish. It puts a glow of reassuring warmth around you, like eating a bowl of Ready Brek. Not for the first time, I ended the day thinking how nice it would be to be a woman.