Aurélia's Oratorio

Oxford Playhouse, 22-24 April 2005

Like me, you have probably not heard of Aurélia Thierrée, but you will certainly have heard of her grandfather, Charlie Chaplin. It was, I have to admit, partly this fact that intrigued me so much about the show. Coming from such a great lineage, the odds were it was going to be a visual feast. With such high expectations I took my seat tentatively, waiting for my unfounded expectations to be shot down. Fortunately, my instinct was right - this is a magnificent show.

So what's it all about? The show is billed as a "dazzling display of stage illusion" and they're not wrong. It harks back to an era of theatre that many people have thought long gone, fusing aspects of traditional circus acrobatics with reminiscences of vaudeville. But it is not just some fond remembrance; the show feels utterly contemporary. From the apparently simple yet deceptively complex set (a plush red curtain surrounds the stage, hiding painted scenes of windows and libraries and seemingly never-ending hiding places for new characters to emerge from) to the physical precision of the movements of Thierrée and dancer Timothy Harling, the audience is plunged into a world that is at once both surreal and beautiful. The ease with which everything is done is to be admired, and is a mark of the quality of the show. How many people could make appearing out of a chest of drawers look so effortless? To describe it any more would ruin it, but needless to say, as the opening scene, it sets a benchmark for the rest of the evening that is never lowered.