Mark Rylance will return to London’s West End this winter in the comic play Nice Fish. The play, which he co-wrote with the American prose poet Louis Jenkins, draws on Rylance’s experiences growing up in the American midwest and follows two old friends on an ice-fishing expedition. It opens at the Harold Pinter theatre in November and the theatre is offering free tickets on the night, in a private box, to the first audience members who turn up either dressed as a fish or in fishing gear (a rod appears to be essential). A total of four free tickets will be given away each night.

The show, which is transferring from New York, is directed by Claire van Kampen with whom Rylance has collaborated frequently since they married in 1989. She wrote Farinelli and the King, which starred Rylance as King Philippe V of Spain and ran in the West End last year after opening at Shakespeare’s Globe.



Previews for Nice Fish begin on 15 November. Jim Lichtscheidl co-stars with Rylance. They are joined by Kayli Carter, Bob Davis and Raye Birk.

The show was staged at St Ann’s Warehouse in New York earlier this year. In her Guardian review, Alexis Soloski described it as a cross between Samuel Beckett and A Prairie Home Companion as it “merges existential dread with genial folksiness”. Soloski concluded: “To see Rylance wrestle with a tent is a vision to melt even the iciest heart.”