Review: Yellowfin – Southwark Playhouse
The courtroom drama genre has produced some of the best known, and maybe just some of the best, plays and films around. Twelve Angry Men, A Few Good Men, Anatomy of a Murder, To Kill A Mockingbird – it’s easy to reel off a list, and the genre is still a go-to for writers and producers with recent hits like The Trial Of The Chicago 7 and Worth telling true stories from the courtroom.
It is rare though for a courtroom drama to unfold entirely within the four walls of the room, without backstory or character development happening away from the court proceedings. The scenes between Atticus Finch and his daughter in To Kill A Mockingbird, James Stewart’s trailer park visit at the end of Anatomy Of A Murder – the additional scenes are often crucial in the telling of the story.
This is not the case in Marek Horn’s Yellowfin at Southwark Playhouse, which takes place in [almost] real time, over the course of 90 minutes at a hearing in Washington DC. There’s no murder here, unless you count humanity’s ecological destruction leading to the disappearance of fish from the world. Rather, three senators have been tasked with unpicking the history of a former fish smuggler who may or may not have access to an astonishingly rare tin of tuna. That tin, it seems, at least according to the senators, may contain a clue to the demise of the fish, and just maybe the knowledge necessary to bring them back.
Converting Southwark’s smaller auditorium into the courtroom, with the audience watching on two sides, the legal tennis match takes place between the three senators (Nancy Crane, Nicholas Day and Beruce Khan – the forceful and impatient chair, her ageing colleague who is more comfortable with reminiscing about the days before global catastrophe than conducting the hearing, and the torture-happy former CIA agent) and the dishevelled Calantini (Joshua James). The wider context, the picture of what the world looks like beyond these four walls, is hinted at in testimony and in senatorial reminiscences, several of which offer the kind of bombshell moment that shows just how fatuous this hearing really is.
The sharp satire, shining a light on the politicians obsessed with fixing things after the fact, and the tendency to fetishize the individual item or species at the expense of taking a truly global view, could not be more timely. Maybe the producers knew they were headed for a production at the time of COP26 in Glasgow, offering a rallying cry to world leaders to make environmental commitments that anticipate, rather than react to, natural disasters. What they could not have anticipated is the political row that has exploded over fishing rights between England and France. Maybe if Johnson, Macron et al watched the show, they might become more interested in working together to protect the future of the fish stock in the sea, rather than competing over licensing of fishing boats. After all, if we’re headed anywhere near Marek Horn’s view of the world, the last thing that anyone will need to worry about is fishing licences.
Yellowfin plays at Southwark Playhouse until 6 November
The courtroom drama genre has produced some of the best known, and maybe just some of the best, plays and films around. Twelve Angry Men, A Few Good Men, Anatomy of a Murder, To Kill A Mockingbird – it’s easy to reel off a list, and the genre is still a go-to for writers and producers with recent hits like The Trial Of The Chicago 7 and Worth telling true stories from the courtroom.
It is rare though for a courtroom drama to unfold entirely within the four walls of the room, without backstory or character development happening away from the court proceedings. The scenes between Atticus Finch and his daughter in To Kill A Mockingbird, James Stewart’s trailer park visit at the end of Anatomy Of A Murder – the additional scenes are often crucial in the telling of the story.
This is not the case in Marek Horn’s Yellowfin at Southwark Playhouse, which takes place in [almost] real time, over the course of 90 minutes at a hearing in Washington DC. There’s no murder here, unless you count humanity’s ecological destruction leading to the disappearance of fish from the world. Rather, three senators have been tasked with unpicking the history of a former fish smuggler who may or may not have access to an astonishingly rare tin of tuna. That tin, it seems, at least according to the senators, may contain a clue to the demise of the fish, and just maybe the knowledge necessary to bring them back.
Converting Southwark’s smaller auditorium into the courtroom, with the audience watching on two sides, the legal tennis match takes place between the three senators (Nancy Crane, Nicholas Day and Beruce Khan – the forceful and impatient chair, her ageing colleague who is more comfortable with reminiscing about the days before global catastrophe than conducting the hearing, and the torture-happy former CIA agent) and the dishevelled Calantini (Joshua James). The wider context, the picture of what the world looks like beyond these four walls, is hinted at in testimony and in senatorial reminiscences, several of which offer the kind of bombshell moment that shows just how fatuous this hearing really is.
The sharp satire, shining a light on the politicians obsessed with fixing things after the fact, and the tendency to fetishize the individual item or species at the expense of taking a truly global view, could not be more timely. Maybe the producers knew they were headed for a production at the time of COP26 in Glasgow, offering a rallying cry to world leaders to make environmental commitments that anticipate, rather than react to, natural disasters. What they could not have anticipated is the political row that has exploded over fishing rights between England and France. Maybe if Johnson, Macron et al watched the show, they might become more interested in working together to protect the future of the fish stock in the sea, rather than competing over licensing of fishing boats. After all, if we’re headed anywhere near Marek Horn’s view of the world, the last thing that anyone will need to worry about is fishing licences.
Yellowfin plays at Southwark Playhouse until 6 November