“Sit close to the front,” I’m told by the BATS staff, “to help the performance.” Don’t worry, there’s no audience interaction in this show, but being physically close to the Random Stage reminds us that it’s okay to be intimate.

Fish Saw, directed by George Lewis, is a fairytale-esque story of a Little Girl with Glasses, her eccentric family, and their Jenga-block style house – with its very own floating room! – by the sea. The Little Girl with Glasses saves a fish from the grill and the two become best friends. The story is interwoven between the two narrators, the friendship spanning years.

Sachie Mikawa is a generous and expressive performer. Her posture and facial expressions are enough to make the audience laugh, as well as her tone of voice. In the moments that are tender, she becomes more heartfelt, which puts a smile in our hearts. Mikawa performs all the characters in the show, namely Little Girl with Glasses both as a young girl and as an older woman, and the fish, called Mr Fish by Little Girl with Glasses.

Mr Fish is the star of the show. What’s not to love about a big sequinned fish who smokes cigars? I eagerly await the moments when Mr Fish would come back on stage. In this way, I almost feel distracted by Mr Fish, especially when much of the show is told by Little Girl with Glasses. I would like to have Mr Fish be more active in the show, especially as they are featured in the title, rather than remaining as a passive character.

Mikawa is a skilled storyteller. She is aware this is a story based in Japan and is being told to a New Zealand audience. She deftly slips in small key pieces of knowledge about the Japanese culture so that we are aware. For example, she let us know that once you become an adult, you wear a kimono. Later in the show, when we see Little Girl with Glasses, we know time had passed because she was wearing a kimono. However, Mikawa choses only one person in the audience to embody Mr Fish as Little Girl with Glasses is relaying her tale. I feel it may feel more inclusive if she had seen the entire audience as Mr Fish, allowing her to focus her more direct speech to Mr Fish in various people around the audience.

The narration style is episodic with title cards appearing on the big white sheet. Cards include: Little Girl with Glasses, The Floating Room, The Heart of Japan, The Hungry Ghost, and Little Pearl. The screen also includes beautiful animation created by Sandra Lía Iurcovich and Andrea Torti, which helps build the world both of Mr Fish and Little Girl with Glasses. The tech elements – the music written by Mikawa and the animation – work together harmoniously to create gorgeous moments of interaction.

I especially enjoy when Mikawa mimes making noodles and then transitions into a beautiful dance. There are a few tech cues that go awry – lights that come on when they shouldn’t, the projection turns off at one point –  but I hope these are a series of small unfortunate mistakes that would have been fixed had there been another performance.

Fish Saw is both universal and specific. It is a Japanese story, something which I find refreshing. It’s also a story about stories, people, and what happens when the sea, a wonderous entity which can give us so much, like friendship, can equally take this away, and more, with a tsunami. Or can it? “Stories we held on to for so long have their own lives now,” Mr Fish tells us, “and maybe we will meet them again. But for now, I say, let them swim! Let them swim! Let them swim!”

Fish Saw is a show I would gladly see swimming back to New Zealand.  

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