By Megan Foulk, Co-Deputy Music Editor
Akin to rifling through the attic with your mother only to discover the one box of photos you weren’t looking for; Lily Walker’s debut will have you sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor reconciling the many shades of childhood and its everlasting imprints.
Set amongst the pearly tiles of the poolside, yellow-white striped sun loungers and a small bar topped with a fake rosemary plant and a bottle of Glen’s, Staying Afloat’s backdrop had all the inauthenticity of a Spanish all-inclusive.
Comfortingly tacky, the entrance of pinstripe-suit-wearing hotel owner Bill, played by James Ogilvie, complete with Peter Capaldi-esque look and spiky Scottish accent, felt perfectly at home.
Like walking into a bar in Prague and hearing the familiar hum of Anglo-Gaelic cackle, Hotel Del Recuerdos clientele epitomised the British holiday maker – the socks and sandals-clad lager drinker asking Siri for directions to the nearest Irish bar.
Never at risk of feeling like caricatures, Walker’s characters delivered their stereotypes with tasteful ease and conviction.
Rarely slipping into over-exaggeration, Grace McGee’s Michelle felt so real I contemplated calling my own godmother in the interval to check she hadn’t enrolled in student theatre unbeknownst to me.
From her hoop-earring-red-lipstick combo to her ever so real ‘I don’t like to spread rumours, but the taxi driver said he knows someone who knows someone who knows Kate Middleton and apparently she eats a bacon sarnie every day!’, watching Michelle and Terry felt like laughing at yourself whilst simultaneously being enveloped in a warm hug.

Yet, beneath Terry’s philosophical quips – delivered like a true Nietzsche quoting professional by Andrew Graham – the plot fizzed with a dark, swirling undercurrent.
Fuelled by the unsaid, the anticipation to know the couples reason for visiting daughter Philippa, played by Abby Marles, starved the audience right through to the interval. Made darker by the ominosity, the secret cut jaggedly through the playfulness of the narrative threatening to erupt.
Paralleled in Rosa, played by Honey Gawn Hopkins, and Bill’s own fractured father-daughter relationship, the collective inability to outrun the past and escape the hotel chewed at the characters like a terrier to the ankle.

Verging on becoming overcooked, what the long-awaited reveal lacked in momentum it certainly made up for in delivery.
Addressing the elephant in the room – Philippa’s troubled brother Ed – with the aid of Michelle's old holiday tape recordings, the slippery subject was handled with an elegance that ensured all discomfort was sweet enough to swallow.
Piercing the tension like a pin to a birthday balloon, the audience was extended a reassuring hand to the shoulder with the knowledge that no family can spend all of their time in the sun.
Cleverly articulating the arresting nature of denial and the silence that breeds it, Staying Afloat provided the perfect reminder that every family has their demons, but it's always better to face them - even if it means doing karaoke with your mother.
Featured Image: Dan Newell-PriceWhat was the last student production you attended?