Sometimes getting lost is the best way to find yourself, and running away to sea is one of the best ways to get lost.
Ian Hughes' Ship Songs opened to a full house at the Lake Wanaka Centre on Wednesday night.
The one-man show is a nautical narrative of how his mum won his dad's heart with true tales of her own high adventures on the Atlantic Ocean.
It's mixed in with historical heroics from other oceans, the stories of 15th-century Chinese explorer Cheng He and of an Irish convict who jumped ship in pre-colonial New Zealand.
It could have been a dreadful muddle of fact and fiction, especially as Hughes plays a multitude of characters at high speed, making giant leaps of time and space, apparently at whim.
Instead, it's a triumph of timing and skill, with faultless characterisations and apparently effortless weaving of wildly differing social and geographical environments.
Hughes tells his heart-warming tales with self-deprecating humour, touches of slapstick and pathos, and swift physicality, shifting characters with a gesture or an accent and never losing pace.
For backup, he uses a visual aid from heaven - brilliantly effective projected images on a white canvas sail that doubles as just about everything - and songs and music from Don McGlashan.
These are stories of bravery, love, loss, and hope that the future holds something better than the past.
They're also about discovery, not least of self.
It's good-humoured, charming entertainment, both intimate and broad, and first-class story-telling.
-Ship Songs played at the Lake Wanaka Centre on Wednesday, April 29. Review by Nigel Zega.
