Reviews

Hang On

Editorial Staff
Off-West End

When I hear the word circus I tend to think of a bunch of sad clowns and some poorly treated animals dying out in our modern ‘seen it all before’ culture. But despite my ignorance, the circus arts have been undergoing their own transformation for years now, and aerialist theatre company Ockham’s Razor are at the forefront of the revolution.

In Hang On they team up with Theatre-Rites and the Lyric Hammersmith to produce a family show that revolves (get it?) around the idea of Alexander Calder’s mobiles, more traditionally seen hanging above babies’ cots. It’s an exercise in visual theatre and it plays with shapes and objects with the recurring image of triangles and globes, and themes of friendship and companionship, with three aerialists, a clown, a musician, and a juggler.

Visually it’s impressive, but also somewhat understated. The term Ockham’s Razor refers to the medieval philosophy of William of Ockham, who stated that it is always preferable to take the simplest path available, and this philosophy seems to have leaked into every aspect of this production, with some dazzling aerial feats and some fantastic visual delights being slotted into the overall work without any fanfare or pomp.

It’s all quite gentle and fun, but somewhere along the line a little bit of magic dust seems to seep in. From start to finish this is a collaboration which works well, with Ockham’s Razor’s human mobile creating a visual spectacle which sits comfortably in Theatre-Rites’ object-led theatre. And it’s all about the spectacle. There is a comfortable message about friendship stirred into the mixture somewhere along the line, but this really isn’t the type of theatre that you need to follow, and there is something fairly pleasant about putting your brain to rest while your eyes go to feast.

Hang On is a family treat that will delight children and entertain their chaperones. It’s fun, it’s clever, and it’s incredibly beautiful. Its main fault is that it is a little too gentle for its own good, with a lack of awe-inspiring moments or any sort of conclusive grand finale; but overall this is a rare kind of family theatre, built on a firm basis of intelligence.

– Kate Jackson