Birds, we are told, are clocks with feathers – they serenade us at dawn, entering our dreams and guiding us from the mysterious realms of the night into the break of each new day. Company 2’s She Would Walk the Sky is (yes, you’ve guessed it) another contemporary circus show using the oft explored bird-world metaphor – cue fluttery tightrope walks and twitchy hand-balancing acts – although it is simultaneously (hedging their bets here) a show exploiting the also much used ‘ye old world circus family’ trope. So the flutterers and twitchers are not dressed as birds, they sport vintage leotards in duck-egg blue, or red cloaks with gold braid trim – and there’s a fair few comedy moustaches. At times, the jumble of whimsical imagery is rather too close to early Cirque du Soleil for comfort. There is, for example, a character called The Clown, a white-ruffed narrator who would look completely at home in Quidam. Then, there’s The Strong Man (David Carberry, bike balancing whiz kid)), in love with The Distant One (dancer and hand-balancer extraordinaire Alex Mizzen) – for this is indeed a world of archetypes.

But I’m a sucker for it all – circus nostalgia, birdlands, whimsicality – and I enjoy it greatly, although some of the hip young circus kids I’m with have reservations. But not me, I’m hooked. And it has live music! A great female singer and violinist (Sue Simpson) joining Company 2 musical mainman Trent Arkleysmith – or The Time Keeper as he is called here – on cello and very many other things. Sometimes the strings wail with the poignancy of a Alan Hovhaness piece. The music isn’t mere adornment, it weaves in and around the circus brilliantly. The drumkit accompaniment to the aerial work is spot-on, providing a sharp-edged dramatic soundscape to the physical action. Elsewhere, there are bells and xylophones and musical saw – what more could you want? Now is probably the time to note that Company 2’s previous work – going out under the Strut and Fret banner – was the highly successful Spiegeltent show Cantina, which also merged circus and live music beautifully.

Although they fill the stage well, and reach out into the voluminous corners of the Roundhouse with their lovely sounds and images, I do feel that Company 2 is more at ease with the intimate environment of a Spiegeltent – squashed in on a teeny stage, wire-walking above the crowd, racing down the aisles into each other’s arms. She Would Walk the Sky seems a little too – distant.  It is at its best when it bursts out beyond the constraints of the stage – for example, in a fight cum acrobalance scene that teeters beautifully on the edge of the space.

Beyond the other references and associations, the merge of poetic text (by Tasmanian playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer) and circus action in She Would Walk the Sky is reminiscent of No Fit State’s work. Specifically, of Immortal, in which the balance between the two hadn’t quite negotiated itself in a satisfactory way. The show loses the plot after a while, and seems to give up on trying to resolve the dilemmas of merging the bird world and the old-time circus world, but by then nobody is bothered because the divine Mozes (aka The Stoic One) is on the rope or trapeze and we don’t care what anything means as long as we can watch him. More, more, more! Rather too much wire walking and poetic musing and not enough aerial for me in this show…

Directed by Chelsea McGuffin, who we saw onstage in Cantina but who stays offstage this time round, She Would Walk the Sky is not a perfect show, it has a way to go yet, but it is a show full of delightful and engaging moments.