Magic in the family

Aurélia Thierrée has been living inside her own dream for the past 18 months. And she's having such a good time, she doesn't want to wake up.

The granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin - there, that's got that bit out of the way - has been touring the world as the star of Aurélia's Oratorio, a magical slice of theatrical trickery that plays like her own personal dreamscape. But, and this is where psychoanalysts could have a field day, the show has been put together by her mother.

'I know, it's pretty incredible that we can work on such a show together,' laughs Thierrée. 'We hadn't done it since I was a child and it could have been a disaster. But I made a grown-up decision to work with her and when there's a common desire to do something, you can make it work.

'It's turned out to be a huge blessing to work with someone you know so well. And it helps that I really like what she does.'

Her mother, Victoria Thierrée Chaplin, is a renowned pioneer of new circus, the co-founder of groundbreaking companies Cirque Imaginaire and Cirque Invisible. But, even though Aurélia Thierrée originally trained on the trapeze, circus hardly captures the essence of Aurélia's Oratorio, a detailed flight of the imagination that requires its star to call on a dizzying range of skills.

Shedding skins from actress to dancer, aerialist to illusionist, Thierrée turns in a technical tour-deforce that adds up to more than the sum of its parts, thanks to the sense of childlike wonder she brings to a performance that, in lesser hands, could become twee. But she plays down the versatility it demands.

'Oh, I can fake my way around a lot. I've done a little bit of everything over the years, so I just put the different skills to use.

And I'm lucky to be working with a dancer, Timothy Harling, who's so good he can cover for me when I go wrong.'

Broken down to its bare bones, Aurélia's Oratorio is essentially a series of set-pieces, or 'acts' as

Thierrée prefers to call them, which melt into a stream of consciousness. It helps if you go with the surreal flow rather than getting hung up on looking for a narrative, although Thierrée insists there is a story bubbling below the surface.