FAMILY REVIEWS : Fun With Gravity and a Brick Wall

The back-flipping, somersault-turning, gravity-defying DynamO Theatre from Montreal is in town all too briefly, so if you have a chance, take a young person you know--from about 8 years old and up--and catch this stunningly creative youth theater in the act.

In DynamO’s hourlong show, “Mur-Mur” (“The Wall”), performed by adult professional actor-acrobats, an urban brick wall is the meeting place for five young people who play, tease, discover love and heartache and play some more.

The show opens and closes with the arresting image of each actor seemingly suspended from the wall without concern for Newton’s Law. As the action progresses, every emotion--anger, love, happiness, humor--is played out against the wall, often literally, by the gifted troupe members: Yvan Cote, Robert Drouin, Suzanne Larocque, France Morin and Stephanie Vallieres.

They bounce off the wall, casually lounge against it--upside down--crawl up it, tumble on top of it and hang from it at impossible angles. Some routines, by the way, are not for very young children who might be impressionable enough to copy them. (The work was inspired by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres’ New York City street art featuring life-sized figures frozen in everyday activities on the wall of a tenement building.)

More than masterful clowning and dynamic tumbling are going on here, however. If the show were just a collection of circus acts, it would be entertaining enough.

But the piece, directed by Robert Dion, is deepened by its graceful, at times balletic, portrayal of shy, exuberant, quicksilver young love.

* “Mur-Mur” (“The Wall”) at Irvine Barclay Theatre at UC Irvine tonight at 7 p.m. and Tuesday at 11 a.m. $6-$9; (714) 854-4646. Saddleback Community College, 28000 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo on Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 11 a.m., $6-$9; (714) 582-4656.