This oblique circus show from French twosome Jean-BaptisteThierrée and Victoria Chaplin is a tandem ride through an arch, lovely and thoroughly silly imaginary landscapes. The couple alternate ten minute solo segments with the occasional double set piece with rabbits and doves: she is an acrobat, aerialist and human art object; his contributions are whimsical bits of clowning designed to capture young hearts.
What makes Thierrée a good compère is not his patter or his magical skill (his tricks are sometimes teasingly transparent) but his preposterous attention to detail, especially in the costumes, each of which is a stage set in itself. He even turns into a one-man opera at one point, miming to the various parts of Bizet’s ‘Kingfisher’ with the string-operated assistance of two gargoyle-faced kneepads.
Thierrée – white-haired and irresistibly silly, like a surrealist Santa Claus – is popular with the children in the audience but it’s Chaplin – daughter of the iconic comedian – who contributes the beauty. Charmingly solemn and disarmingly shy, she’s at her best when she’s hiding inside one of her astonishingly reversible costumes, disarming predators with her shapeshifting imagination.
In the most memorable acts in ‘Le Cirque Invisible’, the carapace is integral, and Chaplin’s helps her metamorphose from a Parisian coffee table into an elephant. Her transformations have a weird delicacy: as if a creature from a coral reef turned itself inside out until it resembled a camel. They also reveal the awkward grace of the everyday objects they incorporate – bicycles, teacups and broken parasols. It’s a shame, then , that this show is oddly pitched. At two hours, it is a tad too long for little ones, and grown-ups may also weary of Thierrée’s delightful nonsense. But its wit, its humility and its age-defying capacity for fantasy make this a welcome return to London for ‘Le Cirque Invisible’.