Was there rain on your wedding day? Did the caterers drop the ball? Did a guest wear white? Well, Couplet, the duo behind Honey Honey Moon Moon, have a story to knock all those wedding disasters into a cocked hat.

During almost a decade together, real-life newlyweds Marnina Schon and Micah O’Konis have supported each other through everything from queer-identity journeys to forming a musical-comedy duo. ‘We write everything together, and love the same smart, sensitive, but goofy musical comedy,’ says Schon. ‘We’re both big fans of Flight Of The Conchords, so when we moved in together, we both had the DVD, and were like “well, I’m not getting rid of mine, and we need a back-up.” Now they sit on the shelf beside each other.’

With such compatibility, you’d expect wedding planning to be a dream. But the story of their nuptials was not so simple. The narrative of their latest show began to take shape in January this year, when catastrophic fires hit Los Angeles. ‘Our venue burned down a month before the day,’ explains Schon. ‘There was a moment when it seemed like LA was done. We thought “are we really going to get married in a month?” It felt frivolous, like we’re not reading the room. But our rabbi said “people need something to give hope for the future, to come together for.”’

With the rabbi’s support, they set about making the wedding of their dreams. ‘She took us through the process of adapting a lot of the traditions so that they could be more egalitarian,’ says O’Konis. ‘And we’ve invented a version of her for our very cool rabbi in the show: she does a kick-flip down the aisle.’

So, despite bed bugs and a judgemental couple’s therapist along the way, the pair quickly turned their nightmare into comedy. ‘It was literally the day after our wedding. We’re like “so we’re rewriting our show, yeah?” We needed something brand new,’ recalls Schon. O’Konis adds: ‘we lost some favourites, like one of our pieces of advice was “the couple that farts together, stays together,” and we were sad having that on the cutting room floor.’ Schon chips in: ‘but we thought “this is the year, we’re on our honeymoon, so let’s do this now.”’

With the direction of Fringe veterans Chris Grace and Eric Michaud, classically trained Couplet quickly picked up the violin and guitar again, bringing an hour of silly yet surprisingly meaningful songs to the stage, including ‘Our Wedding Venue Burned Down’. They parody every genre, from folk and metal to an upbeat children’s track called ‘So Fucked It’s Funny’, giving us all a reason to laugh (or cry) at the chaos of current affairs. But what do they expect in return? ‘We hope people leave feeling happier, with a little pep in their step, humming along to whatever song is stuck in their head,’ says O’Konis. ‘We’ve been together so long and gotten through a lot of things by laughing. And so our hope is that we can find a way for people to also laugh about the hard stuff. And crying is a nice little bonus, because we collect the tears. They power us.’

Couplet: Honey Honey Moon Moon, Assembly Rooms, until Sunday 24 August, 6.25pm; main picture: Jack Morris.
 

Others to see: Duos 

Not to be confused with fellow comedic double act Mel & Sue, Mel & Sam (Pleasance Courtyard, until Sunday 24 August, 8.45pm) are largely absent from British TV screens but have been going down a storm on Australian stages for some time now. The Platonic Human Centipede is their weirdly titled new hour featuring songs and sketches galore. There would normally be music afoot when the actual real-life Dempsey sisters morph into Flo & Joan (Shedinburgh, Sunday 3 August, 6pm) but in The Birds, The Birds!, they perform a script-in-hand play about The Old Woman Who Lives In A Shoe. A one-evening treat as part of this year’s Shedinburgh shenanigans.

More bona fide sisters here in the form of Marnina and Maddy Bye with a new set of sketchy routines as Siblings (Pleasance Courtyard, until Sunday 24 August, 8.20pm). This year, they are proud to announce themselves as Dreamweavers. Absurdist improv is the name of this game from The Electric Head (Just The Tonic Mash House, until Sunday 24 August, 5.55pm) aka Al Ronald and Cy Henty, while Ada & Bron (Pleasance Courtyard, until Sunday 24 August, 11pm) explore The Origin Of Love in an hour featuring oddball soulmates and cursed couples.