Love and laughter truly are the best medicine

Cracking at the Corn Exchange on Tuesday, February 20

EMILY AYLING from the Corn Exchange reports:

ACTOR and writer Shôn Dale-Jones’ show Cracking was a touching, playful piece surrounding topics of love and hate, laughter and death.

In a rather unconventional fashion Shôn mingled with the stewards and chatted to the crowd before starting the show, forming a relationship with his audience.

At times we would find ourselves nodding in response to the script.

It was almost unclear to where Shôn as a person ended and where he became the character of his own piece as the two intertwined in this tale of fact and fiction. Yet as the familiar, gentle lilt of the joyous piece The Birds At Menai (John Biddle), faded behind Shôn’s voice, his world began to form.

Originally written for BBC Radio 4 as a 44-minute radio drama, this 75-minute stage show took a good story and made it into a great world. With a set of just a table, chair, two eggs and a wig, it was the physical theatre, variety of music and voice/sound effects that plunged the viewer into the community of Shôn’s hometown on the Isle of Anglesey.

Here we met an array of characters, including Shôn’s mother, and a rather violent young boy – all played by Shôn, entirely believable and almost tangible as their own beings.

The story’s focus is on Shôn’s relationship with his mother and the humour they share.

To cheer his mother up as she awaits some test results he decides to crack an egg on her head. However, his nosy neighbour Mr Evans spies the joke and misunderstands it entirely. Rumours spread, accusations fly about town and soon Shôn is a wanted man.

Throughout this chaos, one thing never changes, Shôn’s love for his mother and his sense of humour.

In a world so interconnected, where comments and jokes are misunderstood online every day, Cracking is a breath of fresh air that shows perhaps not everything is as serious as we perceive it and that love and laughter truly are the best medicine.