Wot? No Fish!!, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre ★★★★★

Wot? No Fish!! review, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre: Culture Whisper says ★★★★★
If you’re looking for a play with dazzling drama and visuals, then Wot? No Fish!! is not for you. In fact, if you’re looking for a play – full stop – then it may not be for you.
Wot? Not Fish!! is a one-man show written and performed by Danny Braverman in which he tells us the story of his great-uncle Ab Solomons’ life. But it’s the way in which the story is told that sets this production apart as unique and beautiful; the story is told through Solomons’ very personal and private artwork.
The story, Ab Solomons’ art and Wot? No fish!!
Ab Solomons was a shoemaker in London for the better part of the 20^th century. Every week on Thursday when he received his wages – in a small brown envelope called a wage packet as was then the custom – he would draw a picture on the packet for his wife before he took the wages home to her. Between 1926 and 1982, Solomons drew around 3000 pictures to his wife, always one a week even through births, deaths and the outbreak of war.
About the show, part of Southbank Centre Festival of Love
The show, a collaboration between Danny Braverman and Nick Philippou (director), gives us a chance to step into this true and simple, yet somehow remarkable, story and witness the changes that 56 years bring to a person, a city and a marriage. While Braverman’s narration is occasionally awkward and over-sentimental, a particularly interesting dynamic develops when he himself appears in a few of the artworks. Overall, the astonishing honesty of the doodles moves and inspires; it would take rather a steely heart to not be charmed by this production.