Rêves from Inshi Circus at Assembly Roxy resists easy categorisation. It’s part circus, part dance, part acrobatics and wholehearted physical theatre, woven together with a heartbreaking narrative.

Five performers stagger onto the stage, dressed in shorts, vests and slouching boots. Evoking childhood, they laugh, squabble and play, dreaming of what their futures might hold. Maybe they want to be doctors, maybe they want to be lawyers. Or maybe they just want to be able to watch their own children laugh and play as they grow up. Michailo Makarov‘s choreography is lyrical, unflinching and shot through with yearning.

A series of sequences set to classical music follow. Solo performers leap, tumble, juggle and soar across the stage. Beautiful lighting celebrates their artistry. One man turns somersaults amidst a storm of juggling balls to the chilly crescendos of Stravinsky’s Winter (Vladyslav Holda). Another performs handstands, suspended in mid-air with impossible grace (Anton Managharov).

The storytelling turns autobiographical. These performers are all from Ukraine. A voiceover tells of a baby who crawled onto the stage, in the middle of an opera in which his mother starred. The show stopped, the audience were enthralled. That theatre’s now turned to rubble. Another performer laments the loss of his love. And in a final devastating sequence, a clown sent out to fight searches for a whole different kind of bravery that he was never meant to possess.

The sucker punch of director Roman Khafizov‘s production is that all of these young men look like they’re, if not now, certainly soon to be eligible for mandatory conscription if they were back home in Ukraine. The show starts with commentary from a narrator: “you’re blessed if you can have a dream and hold onto it.” For all of us still in a position to be chasing their own dream, this show is a tiny way to show our support for the people whose only dream currently is to wake to see another day.

Rêves is at Assembly Roxy – Central until Sun 25 Aug 2024 at 14:00