fringe: sound and fury's lord of the thrones

adelaide fringe - sound and fury's lord of the thrones
This was my fifth time at one of Sound and Fury's shows... I've seen them do fairy tales, Shakespeare (twice) and Hitchcock... and this time they took on the entire fantasy genre with Lord of the Thrones (but mostly Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones to be honest).

As with the previous shows, knowing the material they're spoofing helps, but isn't essential.

And this time Richard, Patrick and Ryan had a little help... in the role of the hero, Frogurt Snark, they enlisted young Steve (I think) from the audience, to mime along with prerecorded dialogue and general not have any idea what was going on. As a ring-in he wasn't too bad... whether or not he was chosen for his general level of geekness I don't know... but he did seem to fit nicely into the role of a Hobbit.

They also weren't in the same location as previous years, they've swapped the little red tent at Gluttony for the cafe at Tandanya... an interesting swap, but perhaps not one that suited their particular on-stage, off-stage quick change style perfectly, especially with only one entrance/exit to and from the stage.

It also meant that the usual preshow banter felt different, and given that there were more people in the crowd than I think I've previously seen at one of their shows (I'm guessing the Thrones reference drew a lot more people than the previous shows would have, just because of the subject matter), it seemed more about making sure everybody had a seat.

But I digress.

The show itself lived up to the level of insanity that we've come to expect from Sound and Fury, and I genuinely walked out of the venue with a face that hurt from laughing too much.

Given that they show is newer and has a different well to draw from, it felt like there were more jokes from a wider pop culture theme than we've seen before... which isn't a criticism, one of my favourite jokes was a reference to Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

They have in no way lost that improvisational feeling that often creeps in... I always assume there's a script that at a certain point just says "Patrick will make stuff up here" or "vamping by all here as required". And I love when it throws one of the others off, usually Richard.

We also got a musical number from Ryan this time around... he's performing a solo show, Beers About Songs this year as well as the Sound and Fury show (in fact they're all doing an additional show, Patrick has Half Hour Hamlet and Richard is running one of the Escape Rooms... although I'm not completely sure which one)... so part way through we got a lovely little dirty ditty where the audience got to sing along to the chorus, and we all got louder and more into it on every repetition.

I won't say it's my favourite of their shows (my heart will always belong to Hamlet and Juliet), but it's still a damn good time and I laughed myself silly.

Oh, and Patrick, those black tights aren't as tight/revealing as you seem to think they are... you can totally relax.

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