'If anybody here came to see a nice, well-written play, you're going to be disappointed.' So warns Hugh Hughes – artist, performer, indefatigably smiley Welshman – in the opening moments of this, his fourth full-length show. But, as always with Hughes, all is not quite what it seems: this is a typically knowing reminder of the layering of fact and fiction that underpins all his shows.
Hughes is the creation of Hoipolloi's artistic director Shôn Dale-Jones: an alter ego through whom Dale-Jones explores elements of his family life and history, blending truth and invention along invisible seams (as, of course, any fictional creation necessarily does). Here, Hughes's subject is memory: performing alongside his sister Delyth and brother Derwyn, he describes the 'memory bombs' set off by their mother's decision to move out of the family home in Anglesey.
It's one part presentation – we're shown a diagram indicating the precise location of the hall rug – to one part meta-theatrical performance: a film showing Derwyn on a black-box stage, tapping into the primal pain of losing his homing pigeons as a boy, is one of several hilarious riffs on the absurdity of certain theatrical techniques.
It's a little over-long – but, like Hughes's previous shows, this is a highly intelligent, beautifully performed piece that tugs the heartstrings with apparent real-life revelation, while spinning a story that's every bit as craftily constructed as a 'nice, well-written play'.