Date: Fri 03-Nov-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A-15

Quick Words:

Rep-Cirque-Invisible-Chaplin

Full Text:

(rev of Le Cirque Invisible at Yale Rep, New Haven)

Theatre Review-

At Yale, What Fun A Circus Can Be!

(with cut)

By Julie Stern

NEW HAVEN - Sometimes, when I find myself writing at length about the costumes

in a show it is because I can't think of anything else kind to say. This is

certainly not the case with Victoria Chaplin and Jean Baptiste Thierree's

remarkable concoction having a brief run at Yale Rep, but I can't help talking

about them because I have never seen anything like them.

A dress turns into a large fish and swallows its wearer; a man carrying a

tapestry-covered suitcase unbuttons his tapestry overcoat to reveal a

tapestry-patterned suit, shoes and face. A woman pirouettes onto the stage

wearing an outfit made entirely of glasses, spoons and baking tins, and, by

thumping on them strategically with a drumstick, she is able to play a lovely

melody.

Charlie Chaplin's youngest daughter, Victoria, and her husband, M. Thierree,

have been creating circuses together since 1971. Their earliest effort was a

traditional one, using 30 performers and a menagerie of animals. In Le Cirque

Invisible , at Yale's Repertory Theatre in downtown New Haven through November

4, all roles are played by the couple themselves, save for one comic routine

that employs a trio of rabbits and a flock of ducks.

Jean Baptiste Thierree, a large man with unruly white hair and eyes like Marty

Feldman, is essentially a clown who intersperses his routines with deftly

handled magic tricks. My favorite number was when he appeared as Pagliacci,

singing an operatic aria.

Then, his knees - which had their own faces and costumes - began singing along

with him. Wiser heads assured me it was all lip synched, but I truly believed

I was watching a ventriloquist who was able to make his knees sing with him in

three-part harmony.

Victoria Chaplin, who designs and creates all the costumes as well as choosing

the music, is an acrobat and dancer. In the second act she performs on a high

wire and a giant rope swing, but her most interesting stunts involve creating

the illusion of animals through her costumes.

Wearing a dozen or so chairs on her head, she manages to turn them into the

image of a lumbering elephant. At another point, resplendent in a spangled

dancer's outfit, Chaplin maneuvers her body so that one cowboy boot becomes

the shadowy head of an ostrich frantically pecking at the ground, while her

own head becomes its tail, and her arms, its long legs.

There is no narration - hardly any talking at all - save for the occasional

"hut, hut" from Thierree as he performs a magic trick, or his order to the

audience to "say fromage" as he pretends to take a picture with a phony

camera. The music is both haunting and lilting, and the pace is fast,

interrupted only by a stream of cheers and bravos from the audience.

This is certainly a unique piece of entertainment which gives a glimmer of

what a circus could really be, without the hype and commercialism of the big

ones.

Unfortunately, this limited run will close on November 4, but if you can't get

to New Haven to take your family to see it, perhaps it will surface somewhere

else in the near future. In that case, make a beeline for wherever it is. You

won't regret it.