DVDs: So That's the Way You Like It
Founded in 1947, the Edinburgh Festival is an annual summer arts event. Unofficial performances, often by the more avant-garde acts, were a part of what was referred to as the festival's "fringe." In 1960, the festival's organizer decided to present a revue to compete with the fringe attractions that were attracting large audiences. He assembled four witty young men, Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller from Cambridge and Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore from Oxford, who not only appeared in the show but also wrote it. The title of the intimate, no-frills revue, Beyond the Fringe, was meant to indicate that they were offering something beyond the limits of most fringe attractions.
The show opened in August of 1960, and encouraging reviews led the production to the West End, where it arrived as a cheap, fill-in attraction and encountered censorship problems from the Lord Chamberlain's office. But the reviews that greeted the May 10, 1961 London opening were ecstatic, and Beyond the Fringe remained at the small Fortune Theatre for 1,184 performances, reopening in 1964 at the Mayfair Theatre for an additional 1,016 performances.
Producer Alexander H. Cohen picked the show up for Broadway and for what he was calling his Nine O'Clock Theatre, which had already sponsored another intimate West End revue, At the Drop of a Hat, in addition to An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May. New York critics were as delighted as their London counterparts. Walter Kerr called Beyond the Fringe "funny on all subjects," and Richard Watts described it as "wonderful fun...a quartet of brilliant young intellectuals who refuse to accept the existence of sacred cows and believe toes are all the better for being stepped on."
The Broadway edition premiered in the fall of 1962 at the Golden Theatre and went on to play 673 performances, during which time the title was amended with a '64. As part of a national tour, Beyond the Fringe '65 returned the show to Broadway in December of '64 at the Barrymore Theatre. The writer-performers were given special Tonys, and Jonathan Miller was eventually replaced by Paxton Whitehead, who is heard on the second of two Capitol Records Broadway cast recordings. A sequel revue, featuring half the cast of Beyond the Fringe Cook and Moore, opened as Behind the Fridge in London in 1972 and played 318 performances. Broadway saw it in '73 as Good Evening, which played for a year.
Beyond the Fringe was a landmark in sophisticated, satiric comedy, influencing such later TV programs as That Was the Week That Was and Monty Python's Flying Circus. In addition to being an accomplished jazz musician, Dudley Moore went on to become a movie star in 10 and Arthur; he died in 2002. Alan Bennett became one of England's most celebrated playwrights, most notably with The Madness of George III. Bennett's Talking Heads was recently seen off-Broadway, and Broadway is getting his History Boys this spring. Peter Cook, who died in 1995, founded The Establishment nightclub in London and the irreverent satiric magazine "Private Eye," and also collaborated with Moore on the film Bedazzled. Jonathan Miller, who was also a physician, became an important director of plays and opera.
Recently discovered in the Alexander H. Cohen archives is a black-and-white videotape of what's billed as the "farewell performance" of the original cast of Beyond the Fringe on the London stage. This mid-'60s video, which was never aired in its entirety, has fortunately remained in good, if somewhat variable, condition, and recently got its first release on Acorn Media, the same company that has been releasing performance highlights from the Tony Awards that Cohen produced. Eleanor Fazan directed the original London production of Beyond the Fringe, but the Broadway production was staged by Cohen, with the boys obviously accomplished enough by that time to direct themselves. Neither Fazan nor Cohen is credited here, but the tape does bear the credit "entire production supervised by Burt Shevelove."
The two-hour videotape preserves the entire performance, with shots of an appreciative audience appearing between sketches. The program commences with a brief tour of West End marquees, including those for She Loves Me, Camelot, Oliver!, and ...Forum.
In the sketch "Royal Box," we meet a man who attends a West End show repeatedly in hopes of a glimpse of the royal family. Miller plays a vicar hosting a religious TV program, and Bennett offers a wry lecture on T.E. Lawrence, or Lawrence of Arabia. In "Bollard," some mincing gays alter their attitude while filming a he-man TV commercial.
Moore sings and plays a send-up of French and German art songs, then Cook is a dense Scotland Yard official, fielding questions about "The Great Train Robbery." Moore plays variations on the Colonel Bogey theme from Bridge on the River Kwai, having a hard time bringing the performance to a conclusion. And the first half concludes with "Aftermyth of War," a spoof of sentimental documentaries about World War II heroism and the British stiff upper lip.
In Act Two, Cook, Bennett, and Miller appear in a symposium on a potential nuclear war, then Moore, again at the piano, spoofs a Benjamin Britten song with a spot-on imitation of tenor Peter Pears and a Brecht-Weill number. In "One Leg Too Few," a one-legged man auditions for the role of Tarzan. In "Sitting on the Bench," Cook is a coal miner who wanted to be a judge.
Bennett is very amusing as a vicar rambling on in a mock sermon in "Take a Pew." "So That's the Way You Like It" was called by distinguished critic Kenneth Tynan the only successful Shakespeare parody he had ever encountered. In the finale, a religious fanatic on a mountain top waits for "The End of the World."
The humor here may not be to all tastes, and some sketches may now seem somewhat obscure in their references. But Beyond the Fringe was a '60s sensation in two countries, so it's amazing to see it again in this videotape whose existence seems to have been a secret for four decades.