Customer Reviews

Beyond the Fringe

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4 star:		(2)
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It has taken me a long time to get around to BtF. I guess it was the suits that put me off. Maybe I heard one of their Shakespeare parodies at an impressionable age, and decided this intellectual humour would never be for me. And Alan Bennett simply struck me as too whiny ever to be a comic hero.

What made me take a second look at BtF, and give it a fair hearing, was Eric Idle saying in the audio CD version of 'The Pythons by the Pythons' that he worshipped BtF, bought the record, and memorised all the sketches. Which is precisely what I did with the Python routines back in the 1970s.

Some of these BtF sketches are classics that continued to be resurrected -- and improved upon -- in the 'Secret Policeman's Ball' era of the 1970s. Back in 1961, Peter Cook's EL Wisty tone was still evolving as he told the story of why he never became a judge. Dudley Moore's one-legged Tarzan, although clearly having a ball here, needed to be appreciated visually to get the full impact -- which is what you get on the recently issued Amnesty International DVDs.

Indeed Dudley is the greatest revelation here. His piano-playing and lieder mickey-takes are virtuoso performances. Forget his mucking about in 'Arthur' and his always playing second fiddle to Peter Cook's lead. Here Dudley really is the business.

There are other BtF sketches not included in this package -- such as Cook's brilliant impersonation of Macmillan, and Miller's imitation of Russell getting the better of Moore over a bag of apples -- which illustrate Python's debt to BtF. (I dount whether we would ever have had the professional logician's analysis of the witch's trial on the OST of 'Holy Grail', if BtF hadn't first done Russell versus Moore.)

The BtF show played for years in the West End, and went on to New York's Broadway. Apparently a new cast took over in 1962, but it's impossible to imagine anyone else coming close to the performance standard of these sketches.

As has been remarked elsewhere, the sound quality of these recordings is not brilliant. Actually the engineer seemed to take more care to pick up Dudley's piano than to getting the dialogue accurately recorded.

But this CD is a classic document, and really ought to be in the CD library of anyone interested in the line of Oxbridge humour that started with this, and went on to Monty Python, the Goodies (unfortunately), Fry and Laurie, and Blackadder.

The humour is fairly literary -- with some allusions to classical mythology. I'm not sure that today's typical comedy audience would appreciate all the references.

I should say that I don't own this album, but based on the listing above -- if it's accurate -- it omits several of the best BTF sketches, such as So That's The Way You Like it (the satire of Olivier-style talkingShakespeareveryveryfast), Dudley Moore's parodies of Britten and Weill, and Peter Cook's Harold Macmillan imitation. These are all included on the other BTF CD available, which is more expensive but has three times more material.

As to the previous criticism, the very point of BTF is its Britishness; if you don't "get it" I recommend Minnie Pearl or Prairie Home Companion ;) ...

For fans of early British humor and pre-Monty Python, this is worth including in your collection, even though the quality of the recording is not the best. With his college friends, my husband saw a production in Chicago during the "Fringe" American tour. Several sketches he saw in the original show are not on this recording, and he misses those. But this brings back fond memories, and many laughs, of that live performance.

A friend of mine lent me the "Beyond the Fringe" CD for my own edification. It's brilliant. Very clever and very much ahead of its time.

Their commentary on religion, war, and conservativism could have been written and performed today and be just as fresh. I can now truly appreciate the talents of the late Dudley Moore and Peter Cooke.

If you like Monty Python, you'll love Beyond the Fringe.

When I first saw/heard Beyond the Fringe, they were targeting an American audience. This import may be howlingly funny to the British, but I didn't get many of the jokes. As an American, I'll keep looking for the version that was done by Capitol Records in the U.S.