Review: Compagnie le Fils du Grand Réseau in Bigre/Fish Bowl
Graham Watts sees a clever and often funny show, performed superbly by three excellent mime actors – the Compagnie le Fils du Grand Réseau in Bigre/Fish Bowl
| Title | Bigre / Fish Bowl |
| Company | Compagnie le Fils du Grand Réseau |
| Venue | Peacock Theatre, London |
| Date | 28 January 2026 |
| Reviewer | Graham Watts |
We’ve probably all had to endure living our lives as if in a fishbowl. And it is this lack of intimacy in modern city living that provides a rich source for this physical theatre by the Brest-based Compagnie le Fils du Grand Réseau (effectively, the son of the big network), providing an episodic look at the lives of three Parisians living in tiny adjacent attic garrets.
Created as Bigre by Pierre Guillois in 2017, the year it won the coveted Molière Award for comedy, the name was extended to Fish Bowl when it was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe, a couple of years later.
The theatrical input involves more than 500 props and an inventive set design that not only takes us into their minuscule apartments through a fourth wall but also out onto the roof; and the output mixes slapstick comedy and mime with poignancy, a touch of Grand-Guignol violence, a soupçon of dance and enough domestic disasters to give their landlord apoplexy!
The first of the three oddball neighbours is a large bearded and toupéed man who rides a motorbike (unseen) and lives in a spotless, white apartment where the bed comes out of the wall and – summoned by a handclap – the toilet emerges from under the bed (cue many mishaps later in the piece). Another is a “curvaceous blonde” (this is not me being sexist, but how she is described in the programme) who enjoys to party, sunbathes on the roof and changes (frequently) behind a screen. In between them lives a tall skinny man who sleeps in a hammock, because his apartment has no room for a bed. Although his room is a mess, he is also obsessively fastidious, carefully folding his Lidl shopping bags into strips that can be hidden away.
The hand-to-mouth existence of these side-by-side protagonists is exemplified when the “skinny man” puts his shopping away in a wall cupboard and pushes through the paper-thin wall so that his minimalist neighbour’s screen falls off the wall.
The three neighbours party together (their mutual friendship summed up by the frequent refrains of The Turtles singing Happy Together, once heard, never forgotten) but we all know that three-into-two doesn’t go and when gadget man and curvy blonde hook up together (cue funny, sweaty sex scene), their skinny friend is left all alone. He compensates by acquiring a bunny rabbit (thankfully, portrayed by a puppet) that comes to a grisly end (as does an errant seagull), a scene definitely not for the faint-hearted.
Seated in the Dress Circle, some of the physical humour passed me by, the crowd in the stalls often roared with belly laughter and I knew not why. There was plenty of what might be described as toilet humour, not just arising from gadget man’s clapometer WC which opened and closed hilariously at any loud noise, but also for example when curvaceous blonde sat on an open waste bin thinking it was a seat and then had some disgusting junk attached to the rear end of her sparkly party dress for the rest of the scene!
The relationship between gadget man and curvaceous blonde fizzled out along with his flapping toupée and she hooked up with an interloping male, giving birth to their baby via the quickest pregnancy in theatre history, and moving out to leave the odd couple to themselves. It didn’t work out and so she soon returned, baby clamped to chest, and the strange threesome were reunited for a joyful finale to the sound of The Turtles singing Happy Together, once more!
The freesheet accompanying this performance, given as part of MimeLondon, does not specifically credit the cast, but some basic photo research suggests that the three protagonists are the same artistic team that first created Bigre, almost ten years ago, with Guillois as the tall, skinny guy; Olivier Martin-Salvan as the large bearded man; and Agathe L’Huillier as the curvaceous blonde.
The mind boggles at the technical complexity of a show that relies upon so many props in such tiny spaces. Bags and other accoutrements flew around in a thunderstorm and – as if to let the audience in on the illusion – the curtain call led to an encore where a stagehand was revealed flying another seagull (or perhaps the ghost of the one earlier deceased) attached to a long pole.
Those with a sensitive disposition need to steer clear or look away at strategic moments (especially if you like rabbits) and not all of the jokes worked on me, but there is no doubt that this is a clever and often funny show, performed superbly by three excellent mime actors.
Graham Watts is a freelance writer and dance critic. He writes for The Spectator, Tanz, Shinshokan Dance Magazine (Japan), Ballet Magazine (Romania), BachTrack and the Hong Kong International Arts Festival and has previously written for the Sunday Express, Dancing Times, Dance Europe, DanceTabs, London Dance, the Edinburgh International Festival and Pointe magazine (USA). He has also written the biography of Daria Klimentová (The Agony and the Ecstasy) and contributed chapters about the work of Akram Khan to the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet and on Shobana Jeyasingh for the third edition of Routledge’s Fifty Contemporary Choreographers.
He is Chairman of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle and of the UK National Dance Awards and regularly lectures on dance writing and criticism at The Royal Academy of Dance, The Place and (until the war) for Balletristic in Kyiv. He was a nominee for the Dance Writing Award in the 2018 One Dance UK Awards and was appointed OBE in 2008.
