Catch of the Day
Directed by Megan Jenkins
Presented by Red Fox Theatre Company at 59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th Street, Manhattan, NYC
June 10-28, 2026
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| Jonty Weston, Callum McGuire, Ben Simon, and Anna McCormick in Catch of the Day. Photo by Jack McGuire. |
A subgenre of the tall tale, the "fish story" is exactly the kind of entertainingly improbable yarn that you might expect to hear over some pints in a convivial pub setting like that of Red Fox Theatre's
Catch of the Day, except that its particular fish story is true. Inspired by a 2013 RTÉ radio documentary that Red Fox supplemented with its own interviews with locals who were involved and some of whose recorded voices appear in the show,
Catch of the Day recounts an uproarious, live-music-infused version of the story of some fishermen who made an extraordinary catch off the small Irish port town of Dingle in 1966. Framed as a tale being dramatically reenacted by a quartet of enthusiastic pubgoers,
Catch of the Day is replete with hilarious scenes and characters, but by its conclusion, it also, like hauling a fish out of the hidden depths of the sea, brings to the fore the political history that lies unavoidably under the story's surface. The play's New York production is part of
Brits Off Broadway, 59E59's annual festival that showcases work by UK writers and producers and runs this year from April 14th to June 28th.
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| Jonty Weston, Anna McCormick, Callum McGuire, and Ben Simon in Catch of the Day. Photo by Jack McGuire. |
In the time before the show officially begins, members of the cast greet entering spectators, offer them Taytos, ask them for help picking a horse to bet on, and so on, while also performing trad music, all of which contributes to the lively, sociable atmosphere. Both the musical performance–pieces such as "The Wild Rover" and "Red-Haired Mary" are later joined by original material–and the audience interaction will remain part of play as it segues smoothly into the story of the unexpected catch brought home into Dingle Bay. After poking fun at the behavior and perceptions of tourists in Dingle and talk of Fungie, "the Dingle Dolphin," who was himself a tourist attraction, locals Paul (
Jonty Weston), Elizabeth (Anna McCormick), Sean (Callum McGuire), and Jamie (Ben Simon), who works at Dingle Distillery, decide to tell the visitors/audience about fisherman Joe Welch and his crew, who brought home a strange catch one day in 1966. The fishermen bring this catch to a local publican who collects and studies sea life in his spare time. He identifies the fish as a valuable one that has not been seen in the area in hundreds of years but which is also supposed to be turned over to the Queen of England. Not happy with this idea, the men figure out that they can offer it instead to Éamon de Valera, who, born in New York City in 1882, was by then President of Ireland (he, like the abovementioned actual Dingle locals, makes an appearance via audio recording in a very funny scene). From there, a group of nuns becomes the next candidate for receiving the fish, but not the last–and the question of why one man is as against giving the fish to de Valera as to Queen Elizabeth becomes inescapable.
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| Callum McGuire, Anna McCormick, Jonty Weston, and Ben Simon in Catch of the Day. Photo by Jack McGuire. |
As they narrate the fate of the fish, the four friends act out the various characters in the tale, from local children to English royalty, using few more props than some bar towels and an empty plastic crate. In addition to being terrific musicians and singers, the cast has tremendous, infectious comedic chemistry in both their primary roles as the pubgoers and the fishermen at the core of their story and in smaller ones: whether it's McCormick as an elderly, abstemious nun (with McGuire and Weston as more would-be indulgent sisters) alongside Simon as a priest reminiscent of Bono, McGuire and Weston as a pair of working-class Londoners negotiating with Simon's posh Englishman, or McCormick and Weston as Elizabeth II and Philip, there is no shortage of laugh-out-loud performances. At the same time, a serious thread emerges amidst the rollicking comedy as the men more than once assertively steer Elizabeth (the Dingle local, not the English Queen) away from potentially uncomfortable topics (as well as an overtly political song) connected to the story they are telling. The complex politics of a millennium of violent colonial oppression do not, it seems, jibe well with the image of cuddly sheep and good craic that the locals want to present to tourists. This disjunction leads to a standout musical moment, sung by McCormick, in a standout show.
-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards
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