A terrific troupe of nutters, More Comedy and Grotesque Amateurs – the lot that made Wolf Creek into a musical last year – are back with a disrespectful take on one of cinema’s classics, The Sound of Music. Well, actually, the storyline of The Sound of Nazis has a few similarities and it’s set in Austria, but that’s about it. Let’s hope this lot never get slick, because much of the hilarity comes via the apparently thrown-together vibe of the show.
Writer, composer and musical accompanist James McCann warms the audience up with a reminder of how dreadful drunken sing-alongs sound to the sober before the show properly gets into its daggy, low-budget and make-do self. Don’t be fooled though, the writing and the pace are strong and the gags range from totally silly and school-boyish to the culturally referenced to those involving more subtle (possible) references to the 1956 film. The small stage in the Council Chambers at the Tradies adds nicely to the sense of shenanigans.
Avoiding any possible charge of copyright infringement or plagiarism creates some fun moments of boundary-stretching for the co-creators and performers. Maria is played by the radiantly expressive Hayman Kent, a stand-out performer with superb timing. Besides the hairy nuns, there’s a creepy man-child, a reggae-loving postman, a too-dignified retired captain of the Austrian Navy (Austria has a navy?) and of course, there’s your ‘friend’ and ours, Mr H. Having a foul-mouthed Aussie bloke being one of the pretend nuns is funny because of the joke-on-joke element. South African accents must rate (along with Welsh accents) as amongst the harder ones, and one of the other nuns keeps this up nicely. You get a live mountain and a gazebo, both with attitude thrown in as well. Go see. Good satire.
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
