Alongside the quietly enigmatic Dafydd Williams, Hugh Hughes delivers a spell-binding show which plumbs the depths of loss and bereavement but at the same time is peculiarly uplifting and life-affirming. Hughes’ project here, according to the programme, is to share his wonderful world with us, and he certainly has a unique insight which is both charming and childlike, especially in the way he marvels at the quotidian (for instance, the number of potato particles in a potato). Telling two stories of death in parallel, his father’s and the next-door-neighbour’s rabbit’s, Hughes gives us an incredibly moving insight into the experiences that can shape an individual; Hughes is at once separate from our own lives and, for the short duration of the show, entirely part of us.
Hughes is a mischievous sprite of a man who wavers between a heartbroken son coming to terms with his father’s death and a stand-up comedian who knows exactly how to exploit his material for laughs. He immediately engages his audience, in a way that could be termed meta-theatrical if it wasn’t for the fact that his self-consciousness is evoked entirely to poke fun at the very approach to theatre that would employ such terms. Indeed, he warns us that throughout the performance he will be using dance and movement to express himself then later proceeds to display an especially peculiar routine which he tells us he conceived during a workshop in Bulgaria, funded by the Arts Council. As the show begins, the lights are up in the studio space and he addresses the audience directly. He offers a cup of tea to one lucky member of the audience, identified by having a ‘T’ written on the back of his ticket, and a second cup of tea (‘EA’ on the ticket this time) is offered later on in the show which serves as a disarming interlude when the narrative reaches its emotional peak. And the performance follows this trajectory throughout; Hughes is excited by the shear wonder of the universe and his place in it, he concentrates on the pathos of his father’s death and then switches to the relative light-relief of the rabbit’s death, then, when it all gets rather morose and Dafydd’s haunting melodies are bringing the tempo down, Hughes bursts through with an unexpected sideline accompanied by Dafydd on the banjo.
Hughes brings infectious energy and touching insight to his show. He greets everyone individually, shaking their hand, as they enter the auditorium, then does the same and hands out badges at the end. This sounds gimmicky but the audience thoroughly enjoyed this unusual intimacy. Hughes was, after all, sharing a deeply personal moment with us, the moment of his father’s death, and it would have been an inferior and colder experience if Hughes had maintained the conventional distance between performer and audience. Story of a Rabbit is one of the most enjoyable performances I have experienced this year because Hughes doesn’t pretend – he is not an actor in the usual sense, this is his story and he plays in a space that is littered with the objects and paraphernalia belonging to his life. The genius of the piece is that we are asked to share in this experience and shown how it can affect us, and amazingly the audience forgets its English reticence and fully engages with the loveable Hughes.
The Wonderful World of Hugh Hughes, currently playing at the Barbican, consists of three performance pieces: Floating, Story of a Rabbit, and 360.
Picture Source
No comments:
Post a Comment