Deconstruction made simple for pre-teens? Something like that. From the time Damien Bouvet appears and strips off the circus gear, all the way to the curtain call, when he uses the traditional hand-gesture to acknowledge the contribution of the inanimate objects strewn around the stage, it's clear we're in the presence of a French philosopher-clown.

This Compagnie Voix-Off production is a work of memorable cleverness and imagination. Bouvet finds comic possibility and intellectual resonance in the interplay of his body and a series of often-fragmented household objects - most poignantly when a series of baby-dolls seem to fall apart and reconstitute themselves in his fingers. (And most hilariously when he straps a longhaired Barbie to the top of his head to become a "woman".)

Nonetheless, this Dad and accompanying children found ourselves doing a lot of shifting and drifting in the longueurs of a long hour. Bouvet's clown was too hollow as a character to keep our attention, let alone our affection.