The Fisherman’s Wife

What I liked

All of the actors were terrific, the production was creative and fun; honestly this was about as well as you could do this piece.

What I didn't like

I have no earthly idea why you would want to do a piece like this. I have had time to think since seeing the performance and consider whether I’m just being prudish in some way, but I honestly think that if a comedic play includes sexual assault, it has sort of a duty to make fun of the perpetrators more than the victims, and this play does not meet that bar.

My overall impression

If you think that sexual assault is actually really funny when it happens to men, look no further. I’m not the sort of person who thinks that this sort of story shouldn’t exist – if this is your thing, enjoy, but when I saw and heard trigger warnings for sexual assault i didn’t figure that the jokes involving that subject matter would be deliberately making fun of the victims, like using a male sexual assault victim’s inability to sit properly as a punchline. That same victim, by the way, is essentially “healed” sexually by another encounter where he is on several unfamiliar drugs and the other participant is dead sober. I genuinely do not understand how otherwise progressive people sat and laughed their way through this without considering what exactly this play is telling its audience.