'Get (your fish) Living or Die Trying (to save your fish)' Review

A Handmade, Hyper‑Committed Picaresque That Drifts with Ease

A pet fish's brush with death becomes an absurdist odyssey in All Fish Everywhere's world premiere of Get (your fish) Living or Die Trying (to save your fish), with an ensemble that commits with a localised brand of sardonic earnestness to every bit as if their life depended on it.

Reviewed by Fernando de Miguel Fuertes.

Nobody told Marina that a fish can't make it to the Moon, and in this world premiere nobody is going to. Get (your fish) Living or Die Trying (to save your fish) is gleefully engaging because of its pace and energy, but above all because of its commitment to the absurd. It barrels through its 55 minutes with a gag‑a‑minute rhythm, and what makes the gags work is the devotion with which they're executed. These are clever jokes, delivered by an ensemble who treat each moment as a matter of life and death.

The premise is a simple one stretched to wonderful extremes: Marina and her fish, Snowball, are inseparable, until a close call puts Snowball's mortality centre‑stage and sends Marina to the ends of the Earth and beyond. Along the way come espionage, cults featuring vegetables, puppets of various sizes, a dog's bowels, niche dance subcultures and bike lanes. The cast relay the role of Marina amongst them, which put me in mind of Todd Solondz's Palindromes, where one character is played by many bodies. The show's habit of moving from one unlikely environment to an even more unlikely one with a passive pet character at the centre also echoes Solondz's Wiener‑Dog.

The writing finds a mint balance between dark subject matter and playful self‑awareness, using a cascade of clever follies as catalyst. The script keeps up an unrelenting commentary on the absurdity of life, and it's anchored in the here and now. Jokes about transphobic planes and a certain international superstar's recent online posts arrive in a single breath, topical and local at once. The show also turns the usual theatre anxieties against itself: "everyone's a critic," a secondary character quips, and we're told the fish doesn't like audience participation, moments after we witnessed ingeniously‑planned audience participation. It's a self‑aware move that defuses my job before I've started. This indirect, cheeky salutation felt delightful.

Then there are the props. The handmade gags are impressive on their own, but they also have a lineage. Sydney's RAT Parties of the 1980s were known for their avant‑garde costumes and outrageous, open‑hearted celebration, and the design here has the same spirit of cheerfully makeshift spectacle. Nowhere is that clearer than when a performer playing lord mayor Clover Moore crawls out of a jumping castle in a wig that looks to be cut from foam board, her distinctive spiky hairstyle rendered in pure, glorious cardboard‑adjacent fashion. The reminiscence seems all the more fitting in the Pride Hall of Newtown.

What lifts the show from clever to infectious is the cast's unflinching commitment to the bit. A raucous audience picked it up and gave it back, so that the room itself became part of the joke. There are also morsels of wisdom tucked in. The one that stuck with me is a hippie‑infused quip about changing your perspective, delivered by Marina while she sits on the Moon with Snowball looking back at Earth. It's the kind of goofy‑yet‑wholesome idea that might sit comfortably in Shel Silverstein's The Missing Piece, and here it lands endearingly without any sermonising.

The show almost dropped the ball after Marina and Snowball were swallowed by a dog. The intestinal worm sequence is fittingly wacky, but it could use tightening, as some beats felt overwrought. In fairness, the ensemble worked hard to keep the wobbly physicality and googly‑eyed expressions from dropping. That effort is a form of generosity, and it's part of why the show's looseness mostly reads as a choice rather than a lapse.

In the end this is a fish tale that knows exactly how ridiculous it is, and that self‑knowledge is its strength. Anchored by performers who never wink at the audience, the show takes mortality, friendship and the absurdity of the world seriously enough to joke about all three. Like its hero, it goes to the ends of the Earth for what it loves and mostly gets there. Snowball would be proud.

Get (your fish) Living or Die Trying (to save your fish) — All Fish Everywhere's world premiere at Sydney Fringe 2026. Inner West Pride Centre – Pride Hall, Newtown, 17–19 Sep 2026. Duration 55 min.

Company: All Fish Everywhere
Venue: Inner West Pride Centre – Pride Hall, Newtown
Run: 17–19 Sep 2026
Duration: 55 min
Photos: Claudia Minter

Reviewed by Fernando de Miguel Fuertes.

Event listing: sydneyfringe.com