Sound & Fury are touring the Adelaide Fringe with their prize-winning show Cyranose. I spoke with Richard Maritzer about the show.
The show was also featured on our list of 20 shows to see at the Adelaide Fringe.
It’s on from 2 to 18 March (except for Mondays and Tuesdays). Buy your tickets.
Who are Sound & Fury?
S&F is an American-Vaudeville trio based in Los Angeles, who do original genre-parody plays. The cast for Australia this year is Richard Maritzer, Patrick Hercamp, and new-to-the-cast Clayton Hamburg, who has never been to Oz before, and can best be described as a “Happy Puppy”, about coming here.
You refer to yourselves as Vaudeville Nouveau Players. Can you explain this to us?
We write and perform in the style or spirit of the Marx Brothers, or the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope “Road Movies.” So there is little or no ‘fourth-wall’: we often speak directly to the audience, in character or out. The shows have broad humor and appeal, but are also peppered with very narrowly targeted ‘high-brow’ jokes for those who are learned in the genre or work, or call-backs to classic routines they might recognize.
Tell us about your show Cyranose which you will be performing at the Adelaide Fringe.
We wrote it about 10 years ago when we were looking for something other than another “Fakespeare” show to create, and thought Cyrano had just the right amount of tragedy to it…to make silly. We brought it to Adelaide, where it won the People’s Choice award in 2008, and then took it to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that year as our first foray into the grandmother of all Fringes, where it garnered a number of 5-star reviews and completely made us feel like we hadn’t wasted our lives.
How closely linked is your Cyranose de Biouvac to the Cyrano de Bergerac we know from Edmond Rostand’s play?
It actually follows the plot very closely (though shortened to one hour), but takes comic-turns in each scene wherever possible, so that even the tragedy of the story, is sweetly-sad rather than pathos.
What inspires you?
Works which can make you see something familiar in a new way, or make you feel like a kid again, or make you laugh without care.
What will French audiences think of Cyrano?
Our “French Accents” are awful and intentionally over-the-top, and other than a few awful “traditional” pokes at the French, and Blaise Pascal in particular, it’s more about the story than about France, per se.
Why should people come to see the show in Adelaide?
It’s a guaranteed laugh. The show is tried-and-tested, and has a high joke-per-minute ratio, if that’s how like to categorize the shows you see! If you like silly humor and verbal-slapstick, or need to know how to romance your cousin, this is the show for you.
Have you been to see Cyranose before? Or the original it was inspired by: Cyrano de Bergerac?
