fringe: sound and fury's hamlet and juliet

I think you'd have to look fairly hard to find a trio of Fringe performers as genuinely lovely as Richard, Ryan and Patrick from Sound and Fury.

They all wandered out of the tent before the show and just hung out with the audience before things started officially.

Okay, so when Richard first wandered out, we were the entire audience... but then it was an 11am show on a Saturday morning, and I think the whole audience ended up being maybe a dozen or so people.

But once we got inside the tent, their energy level was enough for if they were playing to a full house.

And like their Dirty Fairy Tales show, they were performing even before the official show started, partly just screwing around, partly telling stories... just very funny, if totally random, stuff (as well as a bonus "Morals Song" as an encore after the show).

They also don't have a problem with the audience taking photos during the show (they were posing as models from various centuries in the photo on the left below, this was their 1970's pose), although if you're messing around with your phone too much they will call you out on it.

As I said last year, they're a little bit like the funniest people you know, it's not always the most polished humour, but it is genuinely, laugh out loud funny. It also often has that edge of both frenetic energy with a slight edge of panic (which is actually amusing in its own right), but you can tell when they're making it up as they go and making themselves laugh as they do it.

And they're still as frenetic, dirty and funny as I remember.

This time the show is a mash-up of two of Shakespeare's tragedies, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet... but they discard Romeo and make the Prince of Denmark fall in love with the maid of Verona (hence the title). And with a heavy dose of improvisation thrown into the mix too.

I'm pretty familiar with Romeo and Juliet, less so with Hamlet... but it really is a great mash-up of the two... characters from one play are both their original character as well as a character from the other play and it all gets mushed together in one very funny comedy (even if everybody does die at the end).

Just like last time I definitely had a giant crush on young Patrick (hello... he's a short, cute, redheaded, freckled young gentleman, what's not to love)... he's definitely the big joker of the three, and I love watching his face when the other two throw him a curve ball, he really doesn't have much of a poker face, which is just fun to watch.

I also love that they always make him the female characters, or at least the titular Juliet this time around... but he does look pretty good in the big curly wig.

Ryan is definitely the wicked one of the three, or else he just gets all the dirty lines in the productions... and his revenge on Patrick towards the end of the performance had me in stitches. I'm not sure that's a regular thing judging from Patrick's reaction though.

Once again Richard tries to hold it all together, or at least it seems that way, although he does have his own great moments, like an awesome Sean Connery impression.

Their comic timing is still exceptional, even when one of them forgets their lines (not singling anyone out or anything... Patrick) and it's clear that they're having just as much fun as the audience.

I'm very glad that we're going to see their other show next week... they're definitely staying firmly in place on the "must see again" list.

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