Illusion rules the Mandell Weiss Theatre these days as spells woven from the heritage of 20th Century performance royalty pry their way through our ordinary lives and settle into permanent pearls of delicious memory.

With “Aurelia’s Oratorio,” the La Jolla Playhouse is continuing its grand tradition of classic physical art serving text that brought us treasures such as Bill Irwin, the Flying Karamazov Brothers and Victoria Chaplin.

Miss Chaplin was one half of “Cirque Invisible,” a 1995 enchantment which has proven impossible to forget. On that occasion, her husband, Jean-Baptiste Thierree, played a seedy but enthusiastic juggler-magician and Miss Chaplin was his troupe, dangling from a wire, tapping out a tune on bits of hardware, compressing herself into improbable containers, all with a sense of luminous awe that glows still in memory.

And now, Victoria Chaplin is back, with “Thierree” in the middle of her stage name and an exquisite new show, “Aurelia’s Oratorio,” featuring her daughter, Aurelia Thierree, who is – yes – the granddaughter of Oona O’Neill (the playwright’s daughter) and... Charles Chaplin.

There’s no mention of Charlie Chaplin anywhere in the program, but his essence can be found, hovering around Miss Thierree, just as it did her mother. Her keenly tuned physicality, her buoyant optimism, her apprehensive vulnerability morphing into proud survival: It’s all her own but the inspiration, it seems to me, is obviously inherited.

It’s much to Miss Thierree’s credit that she puts as much of an individual stamp on the piece as she does. Her mother wrote it, staged it and designed the sets, costumes and music, very much in her own tradition. Yet the daughter is someone else, more sturdy, slightly less the ethereal dream.

One link between the two generations is the surrealism. This is not a linear script but instead an extended set of variations on a vague theme of, what?, the search for identity? The elusive nature of reality? Fill in the blanks at will. What’s important is the continuity of wonder summoned by such worn means.

There are puppets, dancing draperies, clothing that fights back, tuned clock bells, tap routines, endless scarves, a gorgeous snow drop curtain, aerial work more dangerous than it looks, body parts that go missing and manic choreography.

Jaime Martinez, a dancer of more traditional stripe, is a huge asset to Miss Thierree and the show, a sort of sea anchor in the tumult of imagination.

And the evening begins with the heroine emerging in improbably fragmented fashion from a largish chest-of-drawers center stage.

What else? Well I loved the seemingly random Euro-trash music, heavy on the accordion. And I responded wholeheartedly to the entire Punch and Judy show, including audience, that Miss Thierree towed around with herself as star.

And I’m a sucker for the simple stuff, as when two excess articles of something get tossed off stage left only to be replaced instantaneously by two more from stage right.

This is a show for those who are willing to skip content for awhile and wallow in form. Or those who just want to be enchanted for a time.

Can we book the new piece now? Please?

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