[2014049] Sound & Fury’s ‘Hamlet & Juliet’
Sound & Fury @ Gluttony – The Bally
11:00am, Sun 23 Feb 2014
I’ve mentioned my bipolar attitude towards Sound & Fury’s work before; on the one hand, the lads are great to talk to, and I find the very thought of highly theatre-literate vaudevillian comics appealing. But the shows… ah man. I just don’t get along with them.
But I always find myself finding reasons to give them another chance.
And this show was, I figured, their best chance to win me over: hey, I like comedy, and I love Shakespeare, so this Fakespearean mashup of Romeo and Juliet with Hamlet should be perfect, right?
Well…
Most of the familiar Sound & Fury hooks are there: the so-bad-they’re-good puns. The slapstick physicality. The silly props (though I reckon the stunt-breasts were milked a little too hard for laughs… see?). A few asides to the surprisingly solid Sunday morning crowd.
But what was missing – and this was in no way a bad thing – were the atrociously overt “ad libs”. In their place were a series of moments in the performance where the three members of the troupe appear to try and wrong-foot each other with script deviations and unplanned responses… if they were indeed faux ad libs, then they were masterfully performed.
The merging of the two plays (in under an hour) was, as expected, a complete mess, with the characters of each play being gruffly used to further the juvenile machinations of the overarching plot. But it’d be a fib to say that I didn’t glean some enjoyment out of the show… it’s just that I think I’ve (finally? – it’s taken me long enough) come to the conclusion that I prefer the Sound & Fury guys as natural comedians, rather than as theatre performers or scripted comedians. I really should have checked out their Hot Tub Talk Show instead; next time, then…
(49) Sound & Fury's 'Hamlet & Juliet': Typical S&F buffoonery, though with thankfully fewer (noticeable) faux ad libs. #ff2014 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) February 23, 2014