360; Story of a Rabbit; Floating

Smock Alley

After the end of the second of this series of three shows by Welsh writer/performer Hugh Hughes, a friend asked, “Was it genuine?” The question was particularly intriguing, as in the first (which he hadn’t seen), the word was highly significant: ‘Genu-in’ or ‘Genu-wine’?” Hughes and his friend Gareth (whom Hughes also plays) ask themselves in a vital friendship ritual.

The question referred to the portrayal of the death of Hughes's father. The friend felt he would have been cheated if it wasn't genuine. But Hughes, an artist and man with the soul of a 10-year-old, demonstrates in his work the real deal: to be an artist, some integral part of your psyche must remain a child; and for a child, only emotional reality counts. In Floating(***), the emotional reality of leaving his homeland of Anglesea and its conflicting emotions was too much for Hughes; his first attempt caused the entire island to detach itself from Wales and drift off into the Atlantic. In Story of a Rabbit(***), it recreated Hughes's father as a post-mortem acrobat who could even resolve the uncomfortable situation surrounding the death of the said pet years ago.

And in 360(***) the worlds of the imagination and reality finally coalesce to offer real meaning and redemption to Hughes – and his audience.

Emotional reality is in fact genuine, whatever the "fact" may be. And to show us this, Hughes darts about the stage with the enthusiasm of said 10-year-old boy, employing a variety of bizarre and endearing props employed with great ingenuity. He and his co-performers Sioned Rowlands (in Floating) and Dafydd Williams ( Story of a Rabbit) engage directly and often with the audience, and latecomers beware: Hughes will welcome you but make you feel guilty.

The running order is mystifying: why did Hughes choose to run them back-to-front, or his most recent show first, and his first show last? 360departs from the others as it is solo and uses no props but the audience's imagination, and in fact leaves you in an altered state at its end. And its polish does eclipse the others, which in a creation timeline came before it.

Yet all three do create “The Wonderful World of Hugh Hughes”: a warm and playful place in the psyche most of us left when we stopped scraping our knees. Despite the occasional irritating rambling these three shows are a charming encounter with performance theatre and an unusual performer.