FLOATING. To 22 November.

London/Tour.

FLOATING
by Hugh Hughes and Sioned Rowlands.

Barbican Theatre (The Pit) To 30 June.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm no performance 28, 29 June Mat 30 June 2.30pm.
Audio-described 30 June 2.30pm.

then Tour 20 August-22 November 2007.
Runs 1hr 10min No interval.

TICKETS: 0845 120 7511 (£2 transaction fee).
www.barbican.org.uk/bite (reduced booking fee online).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 June.

From wrestling to seismic rupture, a questioning of reality.
Floating is about being rooted to the earth; specifically, the earth around one’s birthplace. Which for Hugh Hughes means the Isle of Anglesey. His attempt to leave it coincides with the isle itself separating from North Wales to go on an Atlantic voyage back in 1982, when attention was focused further south on the Falklands.

As Hugh’s foot was about to touch the Menai Bridge, crossing to mainland Wales, a hand on his shoulder restrained him and the tectonic rupture occurred. Yet the adventures of the floating island are less interesting than the performance paraphernalia surrounding it, or the ever-eager personalities of Hughes and Sioned Rowlands, present throughout to assist with the story.

For this piece (Hughes presents it under Hoipolloi Theatre’s banner) is also about memory and fantasy, quoting film-director Luis Bunuel on the merging of the two. The incredible island story becomes a credible vehicle for exploring the ambiguities of departure. Anglesey topography and landmarks feature as does that famous long place-name (‘Llanfair…’), set to music.

These performers carry through everything with their personas, likeable even when smilingly rebuking latecomers or participant audience-members who don’t quite get it right. Wrestling mags (Hughes’s dead mother’s favourite reading), a family slide and Anglesey souvenirs are passed round, increasing a sense of intimacy.

It’s an example of what performer Cindy Oswin refers to in her lecture/performance On The Fringe as work existing in the gap between theatre and life. Apart from the clearly invented, how much is reality as presented, how much is a new reality made from the re-arrangement of actual life? How much do we see of the performers’ own natures?

And what makes something real? That it’s believed in? Or believed in for the duration of the show? There seems a finely-wrought naivety to the staging, an apparently haphazard collection of screens, set-pieces, gramophone, powerpoint. Even the sound operator’s called upon by name. How artfully is this performance-style contrived?

This question of reality, and the degree of intermingling of performer and ‘character’, runs parallel with the stated theme; it’s what keeps Floating bobbing amiably along on its course.

Cast: Hugh Hughes, Sioned Rowlands.

2007-06-21 10:01:14