THEATRE PREVIEW:
Published in
They don't talk to the press. They don't give interviews. It's all part of the mystique. A certain... invisibility.
"Le Cirque Invisible"
("The Invisible Circus") relies on media advances and reviews, press
releases, word of mouth and impeccable credentials. After all, its co-creator is Victoria
Chaplin, whose father was comic genius Charlie Chaplin and whose grandfather
was brilliant playwright Eugene O'Neill.
Chaplin is the daredevil/aerialist extraordinaire, and her
co-creator/husband, Jean Baptiste Thierree [Note: accent upward from lower left toward upper
right on the second 'e'] is the clown prince.
The one-ring, two-person, two-hour
mini-spectacle gets its West coast premiere as the La Jolla Playhouse 1995
season opener. The innovative
husband-wife team has been re-inventing the concept of circus for the past 25
years, since they met in
To La Jolla Playhouse artistic
director Michael Greif, they are "pioneers in what we now call the New
Vaudevillian tradition." The
Playhouse has done its best to advance that tradition, showcasing, over the
past few years, Bill Irwin, Geoff Hoyle, The Flying Karamazov Brothers, and
Mump & Smoot. Others have found in
Le Cirque shades of the Little Tramp, Harpo Marx, Monty Python, Penn &
Teller, the Flying Wallendas,
In describing "Le Cirque
Invisible," critics here and abroad have invoked phrases such as
"one-ring wonder," "whimsical, bizarre and truly
fantastic," "an aerobic workout for the imagination," "not
just absurdist, but existential," with a "dazzling sequence of
images" created by "nutty visionaries, inspired weirdos, performers
on a street of dreams."
You don't expect all that under a
big top, but this is small-scale circusdom.
The stage is bare, and the single ring is a 23-foot mat. Things weren't always this minuscule. In 1971, Chaplin and Thierree debuted
"Le Cirque Bonjour" at
The show features witty,
idiosyncratic acts with names like The Centaurzebra, The Elastic Man, The
Infernal Chairs, The Furious Suitcases, The Cyclotimic Bicycles. The pulsing,
occasionally mournful music is chosen or produced by Chaplin, who also creates
the elaborate costumes. She is the
exotic, ethereal aerialist, dreamily bungee-dangling or dancing upside
down. But her most enthralling act is
her multiple transformations, utilizing an odd assortment of [fi]objets[fr],
such as chairs, bottles, or bike spokes. She takes the place of the erstwhile
menagerie, reconfiguring herself, by means of balletic contortion,
gravity-defying antics and wildly imaginative get-ups, into a host of flora,
fauna and fantasy animals.
[Note: If you need to cut, this graph can go]At one
point, she assembles and hoists a house of chairs, and by manipulating them and
herself, changes from some kind of metal armadillo into a bird, a sort of
goddess giving birth and finally, an Asian-looking warrior, nobly making her
way across the stage on a steed of stacked seats.
Thierree is the mop-topped
magic-maker, a slap-happy clown specializing in ironic goofiness and
chameleon-like characterizations. He
rarely speaks, but has puppet companions.
He invariably bungles his tricks, and seems genuinely, ingenuously
surprised when they actually do work. As
one
"Le Cirque Invisible"
creates a spare but surreal landscape, a magical playpen for "children of
all ages," as the ringmaster in more conventional circuses used to
say. To Greif of the La Jolla Playhouse,
this circus has "the ability to inspire wonder in everyone who sees it --
from kids to the hardest bitten cynics."
DATEBOOK
"LE CIRQUE INVISIBLE"
("The Invisible Circus")
The West coast premiere of the
acclaimed one-ring, two-person small top, which opens the La Jolla Playhouse
season, runs May 4-June 11. Performances
Tuesday-Saturday 8 p.m. Sunday 2 p.m.
Opening night, Sunday, May 7 at 7 p.m.
Mandell Weiss Theatre, UCSD campus.
$19-34; 550-1010.
PAT LAUNER is a freelance writer and
the theater critic for KPBS-FM.
©1995 Patté
Productions Inc.