[2015033] The Sound of Nazis
James McCann, Hayman Kent, Kel Balnaves, Florence Bourke, Brandon Mannarino, Chris Knight, Leigh Qurban @ Tuxedo Cat – Mayall Room
9:45pm, Mon 16 Feb 2015
After the joyful success of Wolf Creek: The Musical, hopes were high for another James McCann-penned musical parody. Unfortunately, I’m a bit of a fussy bugger when it comes to tropes… and if there’s one trope I hate almost as much as zombies, it’s Nazis.
As a result, I was a little… well, skeptical about this pisstake of The Sound of Music.
The Sound of Nazis was pretty much what you’d expect given McCann’s input: cheeky songs and loads of bluster. While McCann sat at his keyboard throughout, mouthing the words to other character’s songs, Kel Balnaves uses his broad ocker voice to wonderful effect as Macca, the profane Australian nun, and provides an absolutely killer evil stare as Adolf Hitler. Chris Knight surprised with a great singing voice as von Trappe (whose buxom daughter and lecherous son brought a lot of groan worthy laughs to proceedings), but the star of the production was Hayman Kent as Maria: besides a gorgeous singing voice, the sequence with Maria in the nunnery was gold.
But really, The Sound of Nazis is all about McCann’s glorious songs… and god-awful puns, which were dictionary-definition so-bad-it’s-good. And whilst the overall package didn’t quite live up to the masterful Wolf Creek, the quality of the writing made this worth the effort.
(33) The Sound of Nazis: Truly great songs. Truly atrocious puns. And a nigh-on perfect Hitler Nazi-stare. #ff2015 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) February 16, 2015