Hugh Hughes is charming as disarming and as his audience enters he does his best to make them feel at ease. If he is, in fact, a sociopath who enjoys torturing small animals - I would be very surprised. Despite one slightly strange interaction with a late-comer - we couldn't find out where she was from or anything about her, but she seemed nice all the same - he maintained a jovial atmosphere throughout. Initially, with the informal banter and adlibs, I thought that this must be more like a stand up show, which while all well and good, was neither what I was expecting nor what I was looking for.
In truth, Hughes has re-evaluated the theatrical experience. Not set or props or scene changes or lighting cues. Just him and a microphone he occasionally uses. He melted into the start of the show, taking a strange joy in the fact that the show officially starts when the door closes. It's hard to know when it did start - there was no sense of ritual about it. Generally you felt he was stripping back narrative and theatre formalities and just being himself.
The show, we are told, is about friendship. Hugh narrates the story of his eventful friendship with his friend Garreth, their childhood "adventures" and their more recent difficulties in communicating effectively. The undertext of the show is about fantasies, realities and how you can shift and adjust one reality based on perception. It also considers how feelings and atmospheres of spaces affect one's own emotional landscape. By playfully exploring narrative structures and layers Hughes holds a mirror to our own lives and asks if we can't shift our perspective too.
Hughes believes in fantasy as a reality that stands next to our own. He believes that you can choose how you see and what you see - about yourself, about others, about situations. He reaffirms the power of not performing a role that is not yourself for the benefit of others - their prejudices and their worthiness. I fear I am making the show sound more serious than it feels, but that's because the beauty of this performance (it feels wrong to call it a play, somehow) is that it has a deadly serious undercurrent.
Parts of the narrative could be given more time and possibly a better sense of the theatrical event would give the performance more shape - but both of those are part of the performance, so it's hard to criticise them. In one or two moments there was a sense that there is a sharpness underlying Hughes and it might have been nice to see just a little bit more of that - is there a greater complexity to the on-stage persona. I think many of us would have wanted to track what Hughes did and said in the bar that night, just to see if he was for real.
A good story, well told without the pretensions of being more than it is, Hugh Hughes in 360 would endear itself, along with Hughes himself, to any audience member. Recommended.
8 out of 10.
At the Pleasance Courtyard (Pleasance Two) at 7.05pm.
- James Gogan
In truth, Hughes has re-evaluated the theatrical experience. Not set or props or scene changes or lighting cues. Just him and a microphone he occasionally uses. He melted into the start of the show, taking a strange joy in the fact that the show officially starts when the door closes. It's hard to know when it did start - there was no sense of ritual about it. Generally you felt he was stripping back narrative and theatre formalities and just being himself.
The show, we are told, is about friendship. Hugh narrates the story of his eventful friendship with his friend Garreth, their childhood "adventures" and their more recent difficulties in communicating effectively. The undertext of the show is about fantasies, realities and how you can shift and adjust one reality based on perception. It also considers how feelings and atmospheres of spaces affect one's own emotional landscape. By playfully exploring narrative structures and layers Hughes holds a mirror to our own lives and asks if we can't shift our perspective too.
Hughes believes in fantasy as a reality that stands next to our own. He believes that you can choose how you see and what you see - about yourself, about others, about situations. He reaffirms the power of not performing a role that is not yourself for the benefit of others - their prejudices and their worthiness. I fear I am making the show sound more serious than it feels, but that's because the beauty of this performance (it feels wrong to call it a play, somehow) is that it has a deadly serious undercurrent.
Parts of the narrative could be given more time and possibly a better sense of the theatrical event would give the performance more shape - but both of those are part of the performance, so it's hard to criticise them. In one or two moments there was a sense that there is a sharpness underlying Hughes and it might have been nice to see just a little bit more of that - is there a greater complexity to the on-stage persona. I think many of us would have wanted to track what Hughes did and said in the bar that night, just to see if he was for real.
A good story, well told without the pretensions of being more than it is, Hugh Hughes in 360 would endear itself, along with Hughes himself, to any audience member. Recommended.
8 out of 10.
At the Pleasance Courtyard (Pleasance Two) at 7.05pm.
- James Gogan
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