The best show in town: channelling Chaplin

James Thiérrée spent much of his childhood touring theatres across Europe, performing as a piece of luggage that sprouted little legs and ran around in a family circus show. The image of the young Thiérrée is a defining one. As the son of vaudeville star Jean-Baptiste Thiérrée and dancer/designer Victoria Chaplin (yes, that Chaplin), you could say that entertainment is in his blood. However, it Thiérrée’s definitive blend of circus, clown, dance and mime, in which inanimate objects are frequently brought to life, that has ensured success independent of the family name. Raoul, which runs until February 26th at the Abbey Theatre, is evidence of a single and thoroughly singular imagination.

Speaking from a hotel room in La Rochelle, Thiérrée describes the wordless 70-minute spectacle of Raoul as “a visual journey that is a playful mix of acrobatics, theatre and dance.” The show centres on a character, Raoul, who in a lonely and isolated state is confronted with a variety of strange creatures: the ghost of an elephant, a fish and his own doppelganger. It sounds like the kind of spectacle that would be accessible to children as well as theatre connoisseurs.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Children of all ages – 70-year-old children, 10-year-old children. It is an open world. You can dig inside these codes as much as you want, so the audience is really projecting their own meaning, and depending on the age of the child – 70 or 10 – the meaning will be different.”

With the aid of a set designed by his mother, which is created and destroyed every night during the performance, Thiérrée is Raoul and every other character in the piece.

“It is the most intense thing I have ever done,” he admits. “Right now talking to you, after a performance yesterday, I feel like a truck has run over me. After this I will go to the theatre for the three hours before the performance this afternoon to learn how to walk intelligently again.”

The physical warm-up takes 90 minutes; 10 minutes more than the performance itself.

“A couple of years ago,” he explains, “I knew that I was getting old when I began to think of my body as another person. I started acrobatics when I was 10, and I began to see my body as this veteran, an old friend, who had given me so much for 25 years. How each part – my feet, calves, thighs, the ankles, the heels – might be many persons. So before the show I have to talk to them, warm them up, ask them to give me another good performance as politely as possible. When it is just you alone on stage,” he concludes, “it is all fragile, and I like that, the way it is a little dangerous, a wild savage beast tamed and willing to give us a performance.”

Before his Dublin performances, Thiérrée is looking forward to a quick trip back to Paris to see his six-month-old son, who “has already lived half his life on stage, who is already curious. But you have to be careful when you have such a family tradition; you can be encouraging but you have to make sure that he will be free to go in whichever direction he wants.”

Just as Thiérrée himself was free to choose his own direction in life, and look where he ended up.

Raoul runs at the Abbey Theatre until February 26th.