This seemingly gentle, unspectacular performance piece has an uneasy complexity to it. Sono Io? is an introspective adventure by the extraordinary Circus Ronaldo, a Belgian circus-theatre troupe who have passed their art down through seven generations. In doing so, they maintain a traditional approach, that, while whimsical and sometimes delightful, is also a little (perhaps necessarily) frustrating. 

According to the troupe, the piece is a familial duet that “shows how difficult a relationship between a parent and a child can sometimes be; and which, at the same time, can also offer comfort and even laughter when you mess it up”. The premise to straddle the gap between the generations is a tentative one; aside from age, the exact nature of that gap needs interrogating.

On stage, a familiar if entirely imaginary space emerges, compiled of nostalgic perceptions of theatrical histories: a hoard of hanging garments and sheets on which shadows are reflected in a certain kind of lighting. Danny and Pepijn Ronaldo are father and son. Danny, still only in his fifties, portrays a ‘veteran’ artist possessed by past success. He appears in a bathtub washing underwear and dishes in the same waters like a wartime antique. He listens to a cassette of the applause of an audience and joyfully shouts, in Italian: “Sono io! (It’s me!)”. But if this were him, then when was it? In the 1990s? While his generation were creating the internet, with its digital dreams and nightmares? Or is it indeed him? Is it the echo of another’s real or imagined past? 

Pepijn is in his early twenties and experiencing ‘his moment’ – as a YouTube or TikTok star, perhaps? Looking blindly forward to an exciting future… using a medium that his father’s generation wrote, and set the rules for. Danny speaks a rushed Italian, not his language; Pepijn, aside from the implied silences and the staring at his phone, is an exemplary son, capable of great emotion and warmth, communicating with ease… One admires Danny’s luck; Pepijn’s confidence.