Sitcom Mission finalists welcome you to this psycho granny farce of violence & mayhem. Bernard’s world is tossed upside down when deranged criminal sisters Mavis and Josie hijack his charity shop for orphans. Will Bernard ever escape? This escapade of fist fights and family ties is sure to end in a bang!
How are things going, you all ready for the Fringe?
Not yet! There’s still a lot more work to do, but we’ve got a few weeks left before our opening night on the 26th August. We have begun rehearsals and are looking forward to practising in the Etcetera Theatre this week and trying out all our fun sound effects.
Best five words that describe your show?
Farcical, eclectic, unpredictable, energetic, funny!
Tell us a bit about your show, what can we expect?
What you can expect is a real life cartoon, with some sick and violent old women. They’ll be slapstick (think Bottom), mime, parody and birthday treats! You will see a man who lives in a box, a priest with multiple personalities ranging from likely lad scouser to camp fashion designer (our homage to Gok Wan), a Queen’s messenger, sent to tell the tale of deranged sisters Mavis and Josie in the style of an Ancient Greek tragedy, and a mime artist straight out of an old silent movie, not expecting to be dragged into the play. All this is tied into a tale of murder, ghosts, fights and intrigue. It’s all very high brow, so Shakespeare can step aside.
How do you write your show, what inspires you?
I (Dan) try and come up with the sickest ideas possible, then Liz vetoes them and we come to a compromise. We always manage to get in something to do with corpses, murder, and inappropriate sexual innuendo though. Our comedy is a mixture of my dark sarcasm and Liz’s surreal visions. We are strongly inspired by physical character acting and alternative television comedy such as The Young Ones, Filthy, Rich and Catflap, Bottom and Nighty Night. We’ve been writing comedy together since university. Bye Bye Bernie is an expansion on our Sitcom Mission 2010 entry Stand and Deliver (thanks Adam Ant) which was performed at the New Diorama last year.
What do you think makes doing Camden Fringe so worthwhile?
I mean you’ll have a couple of heart attacks along the way, but you can put on a show exactly the way you want. That’s what’s brilliant about the Camden Fringe, especially for Liz and me. With little or no opportunities out there in TV and theatre, you have to take the bull by its horns and say, “I’ll show you what I can do”. It’s the best possible work experience you could get in the theatre, because you have to do everything yourself (casting, directing, marketing, producing, performing etc). It’s a massive learning curve, and great fun.
It’s also a brilliant testing ground for new companies like ours, (Crazy with a K Productions), and it’s great to see what people can come up with on their own, so there is a huge variety of entertainment to go and see.
What would you want your audience to take from the show?
Ultimately, Bye Bye Bernie is all about entertainment. We want our audience to have a great time and laugh a lot. We want Bye Bye Bernie to be memorable. Our audience will be bombarded by all sorts of surprises and hopefully see things they have never seen before in the theatre.
What advice would you give someone bringing a show to the fringe?
Be very passionate about your production because it is a full time job!
| Crazy with a K Productions Bye Bye Bernie [act details] Theatre |
Etcetera Theatre
10:30pm (60 mins) |
£7.50 |
