Story Of A Rabbit, Pavilion Theatre, Brighton, until May 24
1:26pm Wednesday 21st May 2008
Sing-a-longs, tea drinking and gazing at a potato. It's not your average examination of grief but it is how award-winning Hugh Hughes (aka Shon Dale-Jones) explores his perplexing, and often disorientating reaction to death.
Surrounded by odd props, multi-media tools and with musician Aled Williams on guitar and keyboards - Hughes tells us about the first time he saw death. It was the rabbit he'd been looking after for a neighbour back in 1995. In April 2001 death walked back into his life when his father suffered a fatal heart attack while working up a ladder.
It's the melding of these stories which forms the basis for this moving, and often very funny, study of bereavement.
Along the way, we sing a song about an undertaker, two members of the audience drink tea from an urn and we are asked to consider a potato as a symbol of human existence.
Hughes ignores theatrical convention from the start, shaking our hands as we arrive and telling us to enjoy the show.
This continues throughout, with Hughes hopping in and out of the narrative, commenting on the reasons behind lighting effects and dramatic tricks.
There are incredibly touching moments, for example, when his grief-stricken memory fuses reality with fantasy and transforms his father's fatal fall into a spectacular acrobatic stunt.
Hughes's twinkling optimism gives the show an incredible life force which is reinforced by the badges we are given as we leave. They say "Here one minute...gone the next," and, like the show itself, make you want to grasp life with both hands but most importantly, phone your dad.