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Bromance @ The Underbelly Circus Hub on the Meadows (Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2015) Review

This is our first venture to the Underbelly Circus Hub, passing weird and wonderful people along the way, such as men on rollerskates wearing nothing but pants, African bongo players and eccentric fire breathers, leaving us slightly unsure as to what to expect from Bromance.

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#Beren D&039;Amico #Bromance #Charlie Wheeller #Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2015 #Louis Gift #Underbelly Circus Hub on the Meadows

Louis Gift, hand-to-hand base, Barely Methodical Troupe

One third of UK contemporary circus company Barely Methodical Troupe, performer Louis Gift specialises in hand-to-hand with his partner Beren D’Amico. Along with Charlie Wheeller, the trio have had a stellar year. They debuted Bromance, their show about male friendship, at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, then went on to perform at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, complete a UK tour and, most recently, appear at Cultura Inglesa Festival in São Paulo, Brazil. In the second part of our series of interviews with the BMT artists, Adrian Arratoon pins Louis down in London, where the show is currently running at the Udderbelly at the Southbank Centre.

How's the show going at the Udderbelly? Really good. Press night was amazing. We had loads of friends and family come in, which made it a whole lot more bearable. I'm sure you know press nights are hugely stressful at the best of times so that was really nice.

So it wasn’t just sour-faced journalists scowling at you? I didn’t see any if there were; there was minimal scowling!

How did you get into circus? When I was doing A-levels I got really into parkour. I got really, really heavily into it, and at the time just didn’t want to do anything academic, really, which is quite strange because I was going to do maths and philosophy – probably as academic as it gets – if not circus. But along came parkour and I felt like I wanted to do that.

How did you learn parkour; were you just jumping off garage roofs and hoping you wouldn’t break your legs? Mainly by myself, watching videos on YouTube and trying to copy what I saw. I’ve always liked gymnastics and somersaults, kung-fu, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan and all that kind of acrobatic thing. But parkour was the first ting I tried. And no, luckily I haven't broken any bones; I think the worst thing I did doing parkour was puncture my knee joint…

Oof!! … that was quite bad but I was training again six weeks later, so it wasn't even that major.

If I get a paper cut I can’t do anything for about three months… Is parkour scary, or is overcoming the fear part of the thrill? Yeah, for sure. It's a massive adrenaline rush when you do a jump that you've been really scared of and land it. Part of the rush is getting that adrenaline hit. It's the same as circus; it's really satisfying when you land a new move.

Can you remember the first circus you saw? Did you get taken along to see the likes of Zippos when you were a kid? Yeah, it's quite ironic I'm in the circus now because I used to be so scared of clowns. I remember there was this one circus in Highbury Fields; I don't remember which one it was but it was traditional big top. There was a clown who was greeting people as they went in but I was petrified. Apparently the circus was really good but I was just not having it.

So after doing parkour how did you hear about circus and think it was something you could do? It was actually through my dad [the singer and actor Roland Gift]. He used to go for classes at Circus Space before it was in Hoxton, and he told me they did a degree programme, so I looked it up and applied, went to the audition and got in. It was a really fast sequence of events. I wasn't sure whether I’d take a gap year or what but after my dad told me about it I got the application form the next day.

How did you choose hand to hand? In first year you try everything but Nathan and Isis, who were a hand-to-hand pair two years above me, were having a masterclass with a hand-to-hand duo called Greg and Yan, and me and Beren looked really similar to them. We were really good friends already and Nathan and Isis suggested we have a go so we thought we'd give it a crack and really enjoyed it.

For anyone wanting to be a hand-to-hand base what advice would you give them? Try to find something that’s fairly long and not too heavy, like a longish plank of wood, and learn to balance that. It's one thing getting really strong but it's a completely different game if you're balancing something. There are a lot more smaller muscles that get engaged when you balance stuff, and that's where the actual strength comes from. Having massive muscles doesn’t really do a whole lot when it comes to hand-to-hand. Obviously, do work out a bit… handstands are good for stabilising shoulders and arms.

Do you ever wish you were the one getting chucked around? Yeah. I definitely would like to be the flyer. Acrobatics was the reason I got into this in the first place because I enjoy the sensation of flying through the air; the weightlessness

How was performing in Brazil? Brazil was crazy; it was so much fun. The shows went really well there. We weren’t sure how it was going to go down because of the language gap. But they really seemed to get the humour and engaged with it well, which was so cool for us because we'd been a bit worried about that.

When I chatted to Charlie he told me how you've been part of Paul Smith’s A Suit to Travel In campaign and because you're tall you got a special bespoke version of the suit… Yes, [laughs] my thighs were too big for the suit; I split a pair of trousers. I had to go in with one of Paul Smith's tailors and squat over this guy's face and point out exactly which seam was going to burst and stuff. Pretty undignified, but pretty funny! Paul Smith's super cool. He seems really excited about the idea of us being involved, which is really cool because in my mind big important people don’t have time for normal people but he really does. He comes and hangs out with us and tells us stories of his life. He gave us massages in Tokyo!

After the Udderbelly you’ll be going to Edinburgh… Yes, it's going to be very exciting because that was where we previewed the show last year and there are going to be loads more circus people there with the whole Circus Hub thing at the Meadows. There'll be companies that we've wanted to meet for ages so it'll be cool to hang out with them and swap skills and so on. We're looking forward to meeting La Meute, the French acrobatic collective. They’re the most hilarious bunch of guys; the troupe is probably BMT's favourite ever. We love their work.

Because Bromance has been such a success is there more pressure on you to come up with the follow-up? Yeah, there's definitely pressure but I think it’s a good thing because it'll just make us step it up a notch. And we've got a wicked director as well, Melissa Ellberger; she did trapeze at Circus Space about ten years ago and directed a show there. She's an ex-B girl, ex-breakdancer and just wicked, such a cool person to work with. She's got great ideas and a really good sense of the show as a whole, which is important. The three of us are being joined by other cast members: another hand-to-hand pair and this guy who does teeterboard and Cyr wheel so Charlie and him can do duos. We can all do teeterboard and with the hand-to-hand pair we can do some three-high craziness! We've set aside time in October to start creating the new show. It's still quite green. We've got tricks in mind and a fair few ideas but nothing's been created yet. Watch this space; exciting times to come.

Bromance is running at the Udderbelly at the South Bank until 19 July.

Twitter: @BMTroupe; @UdderbellyFest; @southbankcentre

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Read our interview with Barely Methodical’s Charlie Wheeller here