comedy feature

Best Of Brighton: Meet the fringe's social workers

We loved Bourgeois & Maurice in Brighton. You know, 5/5 review loved them. With that show now Edinburgh bound, we found out some more.

TW: Tell us how you guys came to form a double-act; I hear it was something to do with self help?

B&M: Yes, we met during some self-help sessions, but we felt the advice we were getting was too comforting to really do any good. So we quickly decided that our own, more direct methods were what was needed for today’s society. It seems to be working. We were unsure whether to go down the route of cabaret, or to move into TV as fashion/property/health/finance/life gurus – the decision was made for us when we were told we weren’t allowed to sing ‘If You Don’t Know What To Do With Your Life Just Die’ to a daytime BBC audience.


TW: Time Out called you “21st century cabaret stars like no other”. How do you describe your show? Comedy, music, cabaret?

B&M: All of the above, with a little bit of theatre thrown in. Cabaret covers a variety of forms, but there are certainly no feather boas or nipple tassels to be seen here. Although there is a pink polkadot gimp suit, so everyone’s a winner. It’s a bit like ‘Britain’s Got Talent’: you sit back and watch the very best and worst of society unfold on stage. You might laugh, you might scream, you might let your jaw fall to the ground in total confounded disbelief, you might even run on to the stage weeping and shouting “stop stop please don’t do this to yourself, you’re worth more than this, think about your kids, think about your grandmother, think about Susan Boyle” (at which point you will break out of your hypnosis, look around you, and leave the theatre shamefully hanging your head and wondering how you got so sucked into the Bourgeois & Maurice gospel). But you won’t regret it.


TW: The lyrics are obviously very important in your songs, but what comes first, the words or the music?

B&M: They tend to come simultaneously, so that it all fits together nicely like a new born baby. The lyrics certainly drive the songs, but the music is as important. We’d like them to stand up as songs in their own right, not just funny little ditties.


TW: The costumes are obviously an important part of the show, who creates them?

B&M: Most of them are made by the extraordinary Julian Smith. He’s a couture fashion designer with a crazy little mind, so we’re his canvases for whatever the hell his brain creates. We’ve also just had two new outfits made for us by a new design duo ‘Fanny & Jessy’ from their debut collection ‘We Hope You Die Soon’. So their morals are certainly in the same place as ours, which helps.


TW: Our reviewer loved your show at the Brighton Fringe, has it changed for the Edinburgh run?

B&M: Sadly we’ve had to make it slightly shorter, so two songs have gone but a new film is in. Other than that it’s basically the same, if a little better.


TW: This is your first Edinburgh Fringe - what attracted you here?

B&M: The promise of a multitude of riches. And the constant bemoaning; “have you done Edinburgh, oh you must do Edinburgh, oh really you HAVE to go to Edinburgh, Edinburgh, ya ya, you must really Edinburgh”.


TW: Would you recommend ‘Social Work’ for anyone looking for some self-help?

B&M: As long as they’re looking for the hard love approach.


What ThreeWeeks in Brighton said about Bourgeois & Maurice: “If you don’t know what to do with your life, just die” was only one mere splinter of the consummate wisdom imparted by this gloriously camp duo in their sardonically titled show ‘Social Work’. This was riotous neo-cabaret, inspired by and pointedly directed at the narcissistic twenty-first century consumer”


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Online: http://www.bourgeoisandmaurice.co.uk

Bourgeois & Maurice – Social Work, Pleasance Courtyard, 5 – 30 Aug (not 12, 19), 9.45pm (10.45pm), prices vary, fpp31.

published: Aug-2009

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