It’s hard to know where to start with ‘Still Floating,’ a new piece of writing by Welsh performer and producer Shôn Dale-Jones. A surreal piece of storytelling that flips between the present and his award-winning 2006 show, ‘Floating,’ it’s a confusing hour that lacks focus and is frankly uncomfortable to watch.
‘Floating’ follows the character of Hugh Hughs when his home on the Isle of Anglesey breaks away from mainland Wales. In 2022, it seems to double as a metaphor for Brexit, in which Hughs’s wacky head teacher is a sort of Welsh Farage. In the parallel present plot, Dale-Jones plays himself: he returns to his home island, also Anglesey, after his mum suffered from a nasty fall, and stays there for a month.
It sounds simple enough, and perhaps it could have worked if Dale-Jones had focussed on these two storylines. But there were too many distractions. He kept re-explaining the format of the show (just get on with it!) and surreal sketches kept popping up out of nowhere, interrupting the plots. In one, he mimes swimming in the Atlantic, stripped down to his knickers and wearing a harness made from oranges and a cardboard box on his head. In another, he decides to force the audience to watch him suffer ‘seven minutes of pain’, and gives up after 30 seconds.
To be fair to Dale-Jones, it’s a fully one-man show: he runs around from his laptop to sound pedals to props and back again. But the whole thing is just stressful to watch. The show is described as ‘warm-hearted’, but the jokes become too strange to catch on, especially when the subject matter takes a frighteningly dark turn.
When it comes down to it, what ‘Still Floating lacks is direction – it was trying to do too much. It’s a shame, because the mission of making ‘Floating’ fit for the times could have been powerful, especially in its nods to dishonest governments and the fragility of small communities. Dale-Jones can be a captivating storyteller, but the whole show felt like it was being navigated through a cardboard box.
