This may be the ideal festival show – it has supreme levels of skill but also humour and audience participation. There are gasps and laughs and even a gymnastic game of Pictionary. Australian circus company Gravity and Other Myths have already picked up multiple plaudits for Ten Thousand Hours, originally premiered in 2024 and still packing them in. There’s no shortage of Australian circus acts at the fringe, but this is one of the best.
Contemporary circus isn’t just about the “ta-da!” moment: it likes to show its workings. It doesn’t present tricks as magic but as hard-won rewards for the effort involved. This show is an ode to the countless hours spent building the muscle, the reflexes and the precision skills that allow you to make your living flying through the air.
It’s also a portrait of a group of friends having a good time. The camaraderie of the crew bounces off the stage as they set themselves challenges and games, starting fairly simply and quickly building difficulty. They do it with a light touch – there’s a good bit with a trick shot of throwing a water bottle and getting it to land upright. Then, of course, the troupe casually do the same thing with people, with the same bursting sense of delight. Bodies fly from one human tower to another, spring directly from the floor up on to someone’s shoulders, or jump into handstands (backwards, forwards, over the width of six people lying on the floor, balanced on someone else’s hands). There’s some serious gymnastics going on here; they’re flipping all over the flipping place.
By showing the audience different versions and slowly ramping up the difficulty, we start to notice the details – whether the acrobats in a three-man tower are holding on to each other or not, for example – things that might otherwise pass by in a blur. Complicated set pieces are deftly choreographed with impeccable timing. But there’s also plenty of quirky personality, such as in a scene where they miaow like cats, or when performer Shani Stephens takes amusing suggestions from the audience in an improv bit, inventing an impromptu floor routine in the style of both a dinosaur and a drunk festivalgoer. The team’s achievements might seem superhuman but this is a show full of down-to-earth charm.
At Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, until 24 August
