It was the sculptor Alexander Calder who first created a mobile as a piece of art, noting that "to most people who look at a mobile, it's no more than a series of flat objects that move. To a few, though, it may be poetry." For children's company Theatre-Rites and aerialists Ockham's Razor, collaborators on this family show for the over-fives, a mobile is clearly poetry in motion. Moving from coat hangers to giant triangles, this 70-minute show is a meditation on shape, form, keeping your feet on the ground and hanging upside down.
At its best, it is beguiling and surreal. A woman lies down in mid-air to sleep on someone else's feet. There is a playfulness in the way that the shapes rise and fall, subject not just to the pull of gravity but human intervention. There's also something quite dreamy, as if what you are watching was created in that falling moment between wakefulness and sleep. There is some nice low-key comedy in the form of the over-anxious Eric who believes that nobody should ever take a risk, but who is coaxed to desert the solidity of everyday experience for something more metaphysical.
But for all its gentle pleasures and personable performers, the show never feels exciting. There is something odd about creating a piece that explores risk when so little risk is taken: I couldn't help feeling that the skills of Ockham's Razor and the potential to use circus to create narrative and meaning are under-used. The result is charming, but feels still at the workshop stage with themes and ideas illustrated rather than fully embedded.
