QUIRKY BOOM SWIMS HAPPILY AGAINST LOGICAL CURRENT

Who said “sometimes you eat the fish and sometimes the fish eats you”? No one, actually. But at the risk of sounding cryptic, let it be said that Boom has a large appetite.

This 2008 play by American writer Peter Sinn Nachtrieb looks small but has a lot to say about fate and fluke, despair and hope. And the wisdom of fish.

Hilariously eccentric, it starts with marine biologist Jules (Torien Cafferata) in his lab/ bunker/ apartment deep underground. Jo (Miranda Hughes) has answered his ad purporting to solicit a sexual encounter. It’s clear early that neither is all that interested in coupling. Jules is an awkward, manic gay virgin and Jo is just looking for a unique journalism class assignment.

So, what’s going on? Barbara (Nadia Mori) has some clues. She’s watching everything. In fact, she’s controlling a lot of it. She has dials and switches and a big drum that she pounds portentously.

It’s one of those plays that you like even when it’s too whacked out to fully comprehend.

The Live Five/Fire in the Hole production is particularly well cast. It’s hard to imagine anyone more perfect than Mori, for instance, who adopts a wide-eyed, brittle and super-serious look. She doesn’t even speak for the play’s first 25 minutes.

The writer, for some brilliant reason, dictates that when Barbara can’t find the right words, she use gestures, leaving it up to each production to design its own. Mori and director Caitlin Vancoughnett rise to the challenge with movements that are consistently, inexplicably funny.

Friday’s opening started on a breathless note, with the words cascading out of a nervous Jules.

Cafferata needed to breathe just a bit more. He’s spot-on in the part, though.

Hughes was believable as the rather nihilistic student Jo — extra marks for gamely collapsing repeatedly when Barbara throws a switch because, well, it’s a secret.

Set designer Jared Beattie outdid himself creating an authentic subterranean cell and building gadgets and control panels with 1950s sci-fi style.