There is a wonderful warmth in the work of aerial theatre company Ockham’s Razor. Artistic directors and performers Charlotte Mooney and Alex Harvey are a couple offstage, and maybe that’s part of why the connections on stage feel so real. They are joined for their latest piece by 13-year-old Faith Fahy and 60-year-old Lee Carter. As the trapeze sways gently like a pendulum marking time, this multigenerational cast share memories of youth and age, innocence, hindsight and parenthood, pinning down moments where we become aware of our own feelings and fallibilities, from the frustrations of a mum driven to hurling a smoothie across the room, to the girl seeking and fearing freedom as she grows up.
Their words are unsentimental but insightful, their movements – balancing on each other and suspended in the air – are full of care and support. They capitalise on slow-paced simplicity, deftly skilled but always utterly human.
As the quartet reflect on their lives as daughters, mothers, sons and grandchildren, those family relationships seem both solid and vulnerable, much like the connections between their bodies hanging entwined above the stage, limbs locked in origami folds, or finely balanced, holding someone’s whole weight in the palms of their hands.
Fahy demonstrates naturalness and unshowy self-assurance. Carter tests expectations of what a 60-year-old on a trapeze can do, stepping into splits as the rectangular frame she’s balanced on turns in a slow somersault. There’s a beautiful central duet from Harvey and Mooney, sharing the knowing, mischievous grin of a couple excited to shed some layers of clothes and cling tightly to each other’s bodies. They navigate their familiar forms: her foot finding a notch behind his knee; his hands sitting flat against her hips as she swoops forward. High above the floor, they ground each other.
This is a lovely show, light in touch but deep in meaning. The performers’ words and actions are often poignant, occasionally intensely moving, but there is a thread of joy throughout in being present, connecting in the moment with each other and the audience, unbound by the weight of past or future.
At Shoreditch Town Hall, London, until 19 January as part of the London international mime festival.
