Story of a Rabbit

Published Monday 13 August 2007 at 11:20 by Duska Radosavljevic

I have been asked to write this review of Hugh Hughes’ new show. It is actually a new show by Shon Dale-Jones, but he seems to prefer being known as his alter ego both on and off stage at the moment. In this review I am going to tell you a little bit about the show but without giving it all away so that if you go and see it you can still enjoy it for yourself. Also I am going to try and highlight what particularly worked and what didn’t work so well. Hugh Hughes may not like to read the latter, but it is all well-meaning and intended to give him some sort of feedback which he can incorporate in his future work. Feedback is a very useful thing about reviewing. Another useful thing about reviewing is that it gives a taster to those who have not seen the show, so that they can decide whether or not to go. What I have tried to do so far in this review is to give you a taster of Hugh Hughes’ style of expression.

If you have seen Hughes’ last year’s show about leaving home - Floating - you will hopefully know what I mean. In Story of a Rabbit, Hughes uses exactly the same format to explore the issues of memory, bereavement and parental death. His child-like wonder together with a mildly poetic meditation on highly abstract issues will make this show suitable, likeable and very relevant to a broad-ranging audience. If you haven’t seen Hughes’s work before, you will find it slightly unusual at first, but also extremely enticing, amusing and eventually quite moving too.

The second time around, though, this isn’t the case equally as much as the first time. This is because the novelty wears off. Initially, the style is part of the content. The second time - unless there is a clear thematic reason - it seems to become just a style, even when dealing with pain. Equally, I will probably not have a good reason to write a review like this again.