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The Review - THEATRE by SIMON WROE
Published:5 Juy 2007

A family affair to remember

TAUOB
Roundhouse

THE maxim ‘blood is thicker than water’ is an important one for the young girl suspended at the top of a tower of human bodies in the Roundhouse’s latest circus spectacular.
Most of the tensile forms that support her are cousins or brothers, part of an extended family of strong men and acrobats who have been circus performers for seven generations.
Writer and director Aurélien Bory spotted the Hammich family on a trip to Morocco, training where they had always trained on the beach in Tangiers.
The sense of family permeates all of Taoub – a showcase of traditional Moroccan acrobatics combined with video projections and contemporary performance.
Men dressed in plain white robes dash about the stage with paternal fervour, laying their bodies prostrate for the two young girls to walk on like stepping stones, or forming standing bridges with their cupped hands.
The girls clamber across this shifting human landscape as explorers, but it is not done ponderously. That is Uncle Mohammed’s head they are stepping on, and the enjoyment is palpable.
In a show that could easily be sunk by overly sincere avant-garde ‘performance’ or incessant mute acrobatics, a rich vein of humour is Taoub’s winning ticket.
Bory – whose Compagnie 111 are on the cutting edge of the French ‘New’ circus wave – wittily subverts old staples of theatre and magic.
The old magician’s trick of sawing a woman in half is deftly up-ended by showing two girls become one, and the plaintive strumming of the gimbiri stops abruptly when one of the girls reaches the end of the wall of bodies – the musician has run over to bridge the gap.
The piece centres on a large swathe of Arabic fabric (the ‘taoub’ of the title) used in a number of ingenious ways, as a backdrop for video and shadow illusions, a hand-held trampoline and a giant, billowing wedding dress.
Some of the ideas are just plain bizarre – a girl walking on a giant plate of spaghetti which appears to start eating her or a line of over-sized tee-shirts dancing to Usher’s R’n’B hit Yeah – and yet, oddities included, Taoub remains an inventive, playful delight.
If only we could all have families like this.

* Taoub has now finished at the Roundhouse.

* For more events in the Roundhouse Circus Front season, go to www.roundhouse.org.uk

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