Beyond The Fringe (1961 Original London Cast)

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Free Music Notes for Beyond The Fringe (1961 Original London Cast)

Free Music Review: Some of the funniest stuff ever committed to vinyl
Hit: 5 Stars

It's all very well (and true) to say that this stuff is still funny after forty years. It's more useful to put yourself back into the mindset of a 1961 audience, utterly unprepared for such a comic assault on the sacred cows of post-war British culture: dodgily reverential productions of Shakespeare; dreary and self-aggrandising prime-ministerial broadcasts by then PM Harold Macmillan; a devastating swipe at the cheery platitudes of governmental advice on what to do during a nuclear attack (basically, hide inside a brown paper bag); a brutal demolition of piously cliched movies about the sacrifices of world war 2 - these lads dished it out in spades. The laughter you hear on the soundtrack is not the cosy laughter of an audience hearing what it likes to hear, it's the guilty and almost hysterical laughter of an audience having its worst fears and suspicions confirmed and provoked.

Fair enough, Dudley Moore (RIP) went on to make some dodgy movies. Jonathan Miller did some fine work in the theatre and in opera, but nothing quite as cutting-edge as here. Alan Bennett became an English (not British) institution. Peter Cook ended up with a reputation as the Guy Who Never Fulfilled His Promise - but none of these assessments are accurate. Between the talents of the four of them, they produced a comedy that has seldom been lived up to. They truly were the Bill Hickses of 60s England. As Michael Frayn points out in his excellent introductory essay, it's because they made the audience laugh at their own prejudices. Few have done so much, and they never slacked. (One of the sketches from the 1964 Broadway production, included here, confirms this, in a sardonic assessment of American culture and how-the-show-is-likely-to-go-down-there, still true today.)

This is great comedy. We shouldn't imitate its content - we should strive to reach for the level of insight and the accuracy of target that they met. Mind you, it's still damn funny. My personal faves are the civil defence sketch and Bennett's stunningly vacuous sermon "Take A Pew", chunks of which I know off by heart. Good comedy is never cosy, and while this may seem like we've heard it before, bear in mind that nobody had ever quite done anything like this at the time - or, anyway, not so successfully. Genius.

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