Jellyfish
Synopsis: Kelly and her mum, Agnes, have walked the same stretch of beach in the English seaside town of Skegness every day for 15 years. When Kelly, a young woman with Down syndrome, falls for Neil, Agnes struggles to let her grown daughter make her own choices, and Kelly and Neil set out to prove they have the same right to love as anyone else. The U.S. premiere of Ben Weatherill’s British drama.
Starring: Maeve Linkert (Kelly), Shanan Custer (Agnes), Joey Deegan (Neil), Mason Green (Dominic), with Lisa Hanson (shadow partner to Kelly)
Written By: Ben Weatherill
Directed By: Jessica Froehlich; assistant director Ailee Moquist; accommodations director Lisa Hanson
Design: Shannon Elliott (lighting), Josh Barnd (technical director and sound), Max Froehlich (original music)
Production Type: Inclusive company, professional creative team
Venue: Gremlin Theatre, 550 Vandalia St., St. Paul
Running Length: About 2 hours 20 minutes, with a 15-minute intermission
Content Advisory: Language and mature themes. Best for mature teens and adults.
Now Playing: Through November 8, 2026
Performance Reviewed: Sunday, November 1, 2026, at 2 pm
In This Performance: Full cast
Show Review in Brief: Maeve Linkert leads a lovely cast of four in the U.S. premiere of Ben Weatherill’s frank, funny British love story. The plot hits some expected beats, but Jessica Froehlich’s staging keeps it moving, and the play treats its audience like adults, just as Kelly wants to be treated.
4 out of 5 Spotlights
Review:
My first experience with Unlabeled Theatre Company was a great one. For the U.S. premiere of Ben Weatherill’s Jellyfish at Gremlin Theatre, the inclusive company has traded its usual big production numbers for an intimate four-person British drama. I walked in without any preconceived notions about the play, the cast, or why this particular story was being told here and now. I walked out having seen something frank, funny, and moving that treats its audience like adults, which is exactly how its heroine wants to be treated, too.
Jellyfish at Gremlin Theatre: A Company Without Labels
Chris Moquist started Unlabeled after his twin daughters, who have disabilities, aged out of their school programs and found almost nothing in the Twin Cities built for adult performers like them. Since its first show in 2024, the company has paired each actor with a disability with a shadow partner. That’s an actor without a disability who learns the same lines and blocking and performs alongside them, so the two build the role together. Most of those shows have been big, crowd-pleasing musicals like Shrek The Musical Jr., The SpongeBob Musical and The Addams Family, making this small, talk-heavy drama a real change of pace.
Kelly (Maeve Linkert) and her mum, Agnes (Shanan Custer), have walked the same stretch of beach in the English seaside town of Skegness every day for 15 years. When Kelly, a young woman with Down syndrome, falls for Neil (Joey Deegan), Agnes struggles to let her grown daughter make her own choices. Kelly and Neil want the same thing most couples do: the freedom to decide what their relationship means without someone else deciding for them. There are no British accents to wade through, but the vernacular stays put, so get ready for plenty of Mum, chips, and chuffed.
Weatherill never spells out exactly what the title means, which leaves plenty of room to play with it. A jellyfish has no spine, and “jellyfish” has long been slang for someone weak or easily pushed around. It’s soft, transparent, and easy to underestimate, which is how people, including the mother who loves Kelly most, often see her. The joke is on them. Kelly is forthright, resilient, and very clear about what, and who, she wants. In many ways, the whole play becomes an argument against the label.
Weatherill’s play premiered at London’s Bush Theatre in 2018 before moving to the National Theatre a year later, and he made it a condition of licensing that Kelly be played by an actress with Down syndrome. That makes Linkert the first performer to take on the role in an American production, and it’s an especially fitting match for a company whose name is about stripping away the labels people with disabilities are handed before anyone bothers getting to know them. It’s the same kind of authentic casting that made Zack Gottsagen such a find in The Peanut Butter Falcon and gave CODA much of its emotional power.
Narratively, Jellyfish is fairly simple and hits some expected beats once Kelly’s romance begins challenging the routine she and Agnes have built together. Their conflict becomes a tug-of-war between a mother who feels her role slipping away and a daughter who knows she should be asking, no, demanding more independence. What elevates the familiar structure is how frank and not-entirely-delicate Weatherill allows the conversation to become. His script and Jessica Froehlich’s direction refuse to infantilize Kelly or soften the subject for the audience. Everyone in the room is expected to keep up.
Nowhere to Hide in a Cast of Four
A four-person cast doesn’t leave many places to hide, and all four actors rise to the challenge. Mason Green gives his Kylie Minogue-loving Dominic terrific panache from the moment he walks onstage, pairing sharp comic timing with total sincerity. Agnes tracks Dominic down as a potential suitor for Kelly, but when he discovers Kelly wants Neil instead, his disappointment lasts about five seconds before he becomes thrilled to be part of the secret and even happier to have made a new friend.
Deegan’s Neil is charming without pushing too hard for it, and his affection for Kelly feels genuine from the start. That makes Agnes’s determination to keep them apart frustrating, even when you understand where her fear comes from. It has always been Agnes and Kelly, and Agnes isn’t convinced Neil understands what a lifetime of caring for her daughter really means. As she tells him, “There’s caring for her. And then there’s caring for her.” Neil may offer Kelly the freedom she has been asking for, but the play is smart enough to understand that love can’t simply become another support system with romance attached.
Custer is a ball of feelings as Agnes, completely unprepared to see the life she knows changing this dramatically, especially because the person forcing that change is her own daughter. A longtime fixture in Twin Cities theater and a gifted comedian, actor, and director, Custer makes her scenes with each of her co-stars reveal something different about Agnes. We see the protective mother, but also the woman beneath that role, one with fears, limits, needs, and a life that has been built around being necessary. Kelly embracing adulthood doesn’t just challenge Agnes’s control. It forces her to consider who she is when her daughter no longer needs her in exactly the same way.
Two Voices, One Kelly
So how does a shadow partnership work in a play this intimate? Kelly’s partner is Lisa Hanson, who taught special education at Edina High School for 20 years and also serves as Unlabeled’s accommodations director. Hanson knows every one of Kelly’s lines and speaks them alongside Linkert, so the character is literally voiced by two performers at once.
In a big musical, that partnership can disappear more easily into the size of the ensemble. In a four-person drama, you hear it immediately, and it took me a few minutes to adjust to Linkert and Hanson speaking together. Once my ears settled into the rhythm, though, it became fascinating to watch. Josh Barnd’s sound design helps considerably because neither microphone ever feels pushed too aggressively. Hanson’s level allows you to focus on her voice when needed while still letting Linkert remain the center of the performance.
And make no mistake, the performance belongs to Linkert. Hanson may share the words and provide support from the back of the stage, but Linkert builds Kelly’s emotional life from those first daily conversations on the beach through the play’s final moments. She knows where the emotional turns are and hits them with confidence, strength, and a sense of timing plenty of seasoned actors are still trying to master. She’s also very funny because Kelly is no pushover, loves a dirty joke, and gets some of Weatherill’s trickier comic material. When Linkert isn’t breaking your heart, she has the audience eating out of the palm of her hand and hanging on every word.
A Bare Beach, Lit by the Seasons
Aside from a few pieces of furniture and a handful of props, including living room chairs, a metal bench, a beach towel, and some creatively suggested sea creatures, the Gremlin’s playing space is largely bare. That leaves the actors to create much of the world themselves, and they do. Shannon Elliott’s lighting takes on an active role, brightening the beach for summer walks before giving those same stretches of sand a colder, more downcast feeling as the seasons and relationships change. A few particularly lovely images emerge when the actors are briefly held in their own pools of light, either speaking to one another or simply sitting with what has just happened.
This is a very dialogue-heavy play, but it rarely feels static because Weatherill keeps people bouncing off one another. Two characters may start a conversation, but the arrival of a third often changes the temperature completely, whether by introducing conflict or setting up another burst of situational comedy. There is enough happening between these four people that elaborate scenery would almost get in the way.
The transitions are handled with delicate shifts into half-light that feel like changes in mood as much as changes in location. Max Froehlich’s gentle original music carries the production through those handoffs without calling attention to itself. Jessica Froehlich also serves as stage manager, with assistant director Ailee Moquist helping as a stagehand, and the physical transitions become part of the production’s rhythm rather than interruptions to it.
Chips, Chuffed and Captions for Every Seat
The pacing holds up remarkably well over two acts and roughly two hours and 20 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission. Jellyfish is built almost entirely on conversation, yet it never felt sluggish at the performance I attended.
I do have one friendly suggestion for Unlabeled and any future staging. The projected captions currently appear only on house right, and I happened to be sitting behind one of the Gremlin’s large support poles, which blocked the screen almost completely. That made it almost impossible to follow along during the moments when I could have used a little reinforcement. Putting captions on both sides of the stage would give more of the room a clear sightline without anyone craning their neck or trying to see around a pole. For a company built around access, it feels like a relatively simple improvement that could make a meaningful difference for all no matter where your seat is.
That one fix aside, this is a production worth seeking out before it closes on November 8. Buy tickets in advance, too, because our Sunday matinee was sold out or very close to it. The show is best suited to mature teens and adults because of the language and grown-up subject matter. Gremlin Theatre is fully accessible, with a free parking lot next door and several nearby options for a drink or a bite before the show.
Kelly spends the entire play asking to be seen as the adult she already is. Linkert and Unlabeled make sure we see her. And by the end, her request to be loved like anyone else feels like the most reasonable thing anyone has asked for all afternoon.
Where to See Jellyfish
Through November 8 at the Gremlin Theatre, 550 Vandalia St., St. Paul: Thursday, November 5, at 11 am, Friday and Saturday, November 6 and 7, at 7 pm, and Sunday, November 8, at 2 pm. Free parking lot next door. Tickets at onthestage.tickets.
Disclosure: I attended the Sunday, November 1, 2 pm performance as a guest of Unlabeled Theatre Company, which provided two complimentary tickets.
Quoting this review? Please credit: Joe Botten, Off Screen/On Stage (TheMNMovieMan.com)
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