Floating: thoroughly charming
Floating at the Arts Club Revue Stage tells the tale of how the island of Anglesey detached itself from Wales and went gallivanting around the globe. Self-effacing, innocent and thoroughly charming, it is a performance not to be missed.
The character of Hugh Hughes in Floating has an awkward charm that instantly endears him to the audience. In this blend of stand-up comedy, story telling and PowerPoint presentation Hughes and Sioned Rowlands encourage a level of audience participation and joy seldom seen in Vancouver audiences.
The actors never break character: not even after the curtain has dropped. This illusion of the character's lives continuing outside of the play is established by a pre-set that flows into "performance" without the house lights dimming and it is maintained with consistent comments from the characters about the progress of the show and their performances. Hughes and Rowlands vigilantly keep us in the present with "show and tell" objects from the story that are passed around to audience members and bouts of self-conscious narration. They do, indeed, attain their aim of establishing a Connection with the audience with this seeming dissembling of theatrical illusion.
This ad-hoc style of guileless narration is mirrored in the treatment of multimedia. Although the play does include much digital video and slides, the presentation of all media is purposefully low-tech, adding to the home-made feel of the piece. The laptop is covered with a doily, the projections are against free standing screens that are moved around and at one point, instead of going to black, the audience is asked to close their eyes to accommodate a scene change. While the set pieces themselves are relevant and do add to the mismatched atmosphere of the play, it all felt unnecessarily messy. Perhaps it was just not cluttered enough due to the touring nature of the show, perhaps they could have made do with less. It felt a little too in-between for me.
Hugh Hughes' performance was consistent, brave and endearing, but Sioned Rowlands, the supporting actress, deserves special recognition for playing all the other parts with a bold believability. The bright eyed innocence, honesty and unabashedness of both actors supported the fantastical story in a way that a slick presentation could never have done. And it must take quite some skill to choreograph spontaneity and chaos so exactly. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience and my cheeks hurt from laughing by the end of the night.