‘Don’t try this at home,” children may be warned at some of the family circus shows on the fringe. But the joy of this caper for over-threes in the Taiwan Season is that most of the behaviour is based on recognisable domestic hijinks, only taken to acrobatic extremes. A cushion fight, the race to claim the sofa for yourself and some resentful tidying up are all lampooned by 0471 Acro Physical Theatre. Ever tried scrubbing the floor while doing a handstand?
The setup is similar to Hoopla Clique’s raucous two-hander Chores, a past hit in Assembly’s elegant Piccolo tent. Left alone by their parents, three siblings squabble, sulk and goof off with wordless and often competitive antics, taking turns to gang up on or outdo each other. There are group piggybacks, birthday bumps and a three-person-tall tower formation interspersed with some old-fashioned Broadway razzle-dazzle from Cheng-Hsueh Sun, Ling Hsia and Wei-Chueh Wu, who really sell their tricks.
