Edinburgh Fringe 2023
Brotipo
Les Foutoukours
Genre: Children's Theatre, Circus, Clown
Venue: Assembly George Square Gardens
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
In the colourful atmosphere of traditional big tops, the acrobatic duo creates a story with handstands, diabolo and hand-to-hand acts.
Review
Brotipo is a high energy two person acrobatic show for everyone! Performed by Les Foutoukours from Quebec, the two clowns are played by Rémi Jacques, artistic director and Jean-Félix Bélanger, artistic co-director, and they busy (!) and do everything in their show with no other performers. Brotipo are specialists in acrobatic clown and creatively blend different skills into their clown characters and relationship.
Gentle and witty clown characters that are compelling to watch – and not at all scary – they cajole each other including the audience during the show. They also have a competitive side, which is funny and empathetic, which draws the audience in to their visual physical storytelling. Wearing striped leggings of purple green and gold with lime green tops, these clowns do almost every type of acrobatic hand balance, such as, on the shoulders, daringly on the head, plus some other circus skills.
An example of their relationship is when one of them does a highly skilled Diabolo act the other tries to get involved, which is delightfully endearing as he is not quite as adept, but it all ends well and they are still friends. Using physical gestures and movement to tell their story with almost no words they are playful and interactive with the audience and each other, which makes everything very easy to understand.
What the Brotipo duo do exceptionally well is build a welcoming rapport with the audience in their first few seconds onstage in their attractive big top setting that continues throughout and holds the attention of the youngest audience members as well as the adults. It is immediately clear that we will not only have fun but also will become immersed in each part of the show from our seats. Their sense of fun is infectious and we are all engrossed. They achieve this wonderful rapport by their clown characters and contrasts in personalities. The characters are friendly but a bit of oneupmanship brings out relatable traits that are fascinating and the complicity between them and the audience is magnetic.
The other impressive thing that the Brotipo duo do is to create their skills routines with theatrical humour and physical storytelling. Having seen a fair amount of circus and clown I can attest that these two performers from Brotipo excel in telling a story physically in every aspect of their skill sections to create a very entertaining, well developed and complete show full of original acrobatic clowning. They are always in the moment and take advantage of any spontaneous activity from the audience, which very funny.
They also do silly song riffs, clever tricks with broom sticks with some happy and a few sad moments that need a solution. Two chairs feature in the show a couple of times, one is for a virtuoso acrobatic move and the other for a very sweet reason. While there are only two people on stage in Brotipo it seems there are more!
Brotipo is a joyful beautifully crafted entertaining acrobatic clown show performed by two utterly endearing clowns with their quick humour, daring handstands and hand-to-hand balance acts.
