fringe: sound and fury's hamlet and juliet

This is my fourth time seeing Sound and Fury... and my second time at their self styled Fakespearean comedy, Hamlet and Juliet (see also Dirty Fairy Tales and Hitchcocked), and as always I walked out of the tent with my face absolutely aching from laughing for pretty much the entire show.

And seriously, is there any greater recommendation for a comedy show than that?

The brilliant and longsuffering Richard along with the delightfully unhinged and adorable Patrick have returned from the US, but sadly this time they're not joined by fellow American, Ryan (or to call him by his traditional name, Hung Like A Horse)... instead they have the lovely and ever so slightly camp (in the best possible way) Shane filling in.

Which somehow manages to make it a completely different show, even though we've seen it before. Actually I'm pretty sure you could see this show every night for a week straight and it would feel different every time. And even though the mix is different with the change in the cast, most of what I said last time holds true this time around too... it's not always the most polished humour (which makes if that much funnier), but it is genuinely, laugh out loud funny. It also often has that edge of both frenetic energy with a slight edge of panic.

One of the things I really love about Sound and Fury is that they go out of their way to make a connection with the audience... whether that's chatting with people before the show, making everything feel really informal once you go inside the venue, or just the fact that they always seem to be willing to go that extra mile to get a laugh (or just make the most of it when they screw up... and given the pace of the show, you can pretty much guarantee that somebody will screw up at some point... but it's always worth waiting for). And also that they enjoy making each other laugh as much as the audience.

The show itself is a mix of Shakespeare's two tragedies, Hamlet plus Romeo and Juliet, smashed together and then all mixed up with pop culture references (and nice work to Shane on The Princess Bride gags... keep those in the show!) and humour that is (to quote their website) 70% low brow and 30% high brow.

And even if you know nothing about Shakespeare, go for the cross-dressing and the Sean Connery impression, Patrick's dry heaving and the inappropriate jokes.

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