Still Floating review

Authenticity is a much-bandied word, particularly in theatre, but what does it mean? Does something have to be true or simply feel true. Isn’t it sometimes the case that a fiction feels truer than the truth? It’s an idea that Welsh theatremaker Shôn Dale-Jones has been playing with impish glee since 2006 when he made Floating. 

That Edinburgh hit was a delightful slice of whimsy about the time the Isle of Anglesey floated out to sea, performed by Dale-Jones’ alter-ego, the emerging Welsh performance artist Hugh Hughes. Some people thought Hughes was a real person; some may have thought Anglesey did briefly detach. 

Here, Dale-Jones returns to Floating. But can you go back—to the place you grew up and to art you’ve previously made? The world is a different place – even the UK has drifted away from Europe.

There is plenty to chew on in a show that offers a kind of double vision in the way it presents Dale-Jones alongside Hughes, and which features a childhood friend whose partner has returned to her native Berlin in the wake of Brexit, a contested piece of art, and rising tensions about the impact of second homes on Anglesey. 

There’s always been a wizardry about Dale-Jones’ weaving of facts and fictions, but it’s less deftly managed here. The connections often feel forced or too obvious, and the lack of warmth works against a show which, in trying to tell a complex story of identity and belonging, sometimes gets lost on the way.