Day Fourteen: Beyond the Fringe

BEYOND THE FRINGE

Starring:
-Alan Bennett
-Peter Cook
-Dudley Moore
-Jonathan Miller

If Peter Sellers and The Goon Show are the grandfathers of the British satire explosion, the FRINGE boys are the eccentric uncles. This DVD is the only filmed performance of the infamous comedy revue that swept London’s West End and Broadway in the 1960s.

Bennett, Cook, Miller, and Moore hold nothing sacred, poking fun at war, religion, and politics, both British and American. Their material is sort of a comedy grab bag featuring physical, intellectual, and slapstick-ish sketches.

In “One Leg Too Few,” Moore hops in as Mr. Spigot, a one-legged man who is auditioning for the part of Tarzan. Peter Cook is extremely funny in “Sitting on the Bench” as an author with a penchant for writing nude women into his novels. As a matter of fact, his latest novel “Six Million Nude Women” is about the titular (no pun intended) women wandering about in the desert “searching for a place to sit down.” Eventually they discover a cave, and “creep down into it to dance about.” Alan Bennett’s best performance comes toward the end of the show, when he appears as a rambling preacher who seems hung up on the phrase, “But my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I…. am a smooth man.”

Dudley Moore is unleashed on the piano a few times, and Jonathan Miller’s “black man” African diplomat voice is freaking awesome. There are funny hats, and silly voices, and outlandish statements galore.

It is often said that BEYOND THE FRINGE was inspiration as well as forerunner to THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS, AT LAST THE 1948 SHOW, and my personal favorite, MONTY PYTHON’S FLYING CIRCUS. You can certainly spot elements of all three shows in this material. BEYOND THE FRINGE is brazen, irreverent, and above all things, silly.

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