Louis Jenkins & Mark Rylance's NICE FISH Finds Venue Across the Pond; Announces Fishy Deal

As previously reported, NICE FISH, written & adapted by and starring BRIDGE OF SPIES Oscar winner Mark Rylance and Louis Jenkins, is swimming from Brooklyn to London this fall.

Tonight, the Daily Mail has revealed the production will play the West End's Harold Pinter Theatre beginning November 15, directed by Claire van Kampen. NICE FISH is set to run through January 21, 2017.

And now that its dates and venue are set, the show has also announced a fishy deal -- it will be offering free tickets (first come, first served) to those dressed as a fisherman or a fish, complete with all the gear the roles entail. There will be no more than four free seats per performance, and codpieces have been outlawed.

"The boxes are very important to me in West End theatres," Rylance told the Mail, "and I have it in my contract that they have to be made available for the public. On this occasion, the ones dressed as fishermen. Or fish."

Front-of-house staff will decide on the best costumes, so get creating, theatergoers!

After its spring run at St. Ann's Warehouse in New York, NICE FISH travels to across the pond starring Mark Rylance as Ron and Jim Lichtscheidl as Eric, with fellow original cast members Raye Birk, Bob Davis and Kayli Carter. The full New York cast transfers to London for this limited season.

On the creative team are designer Todd Rosenthal, costume designer Ilona Somogyi, lighting designer Japhy Weideman, Sound Designer Scott W. Edwards, and director and composer Claire van Kampen.

Mark Rylance, in a unique collaboration with critically-acclaimed Minnesotan contemporary prose poet Louis Jenkins, draws on his teenage years in the frozen winters and culture of the American Midwest. NICE FISH is an ice fishing expedition where the ordinary and extraordinary collide. Ron (Mark Rylance) and Erik (Jim Lichtscheidl) play the odd couple, whose ordinary lives are comically exposed in this sublimely playful, profound and very funny play.

On a frozen Minnesota lake, the ice is beginning to creak and groan. It's the end of the fishing season and on the frostbitten, unforgiving landscape, two old friends are out on the ice and they are angling for something big, something down there that is pure need, something that, had it the wherewithal, would swallow them whole.

Minnesota's Guthrie Theater originally commissioned and produced NICE FISH in 2013. The play then traveled to A.R.T. in Cambridge, Mass., before heading to New York City.

For more about the West End run, visit nicefishtheplay.co.uk.

Photo Credit: Teddy Wolff