Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook, Alan Bennett - Beyond The Fringe (1961 Original London Cast)

The Show that Ignited the Satire Boom of the 60'S. CD'S One and Two Contain, for the First Time Complete 1961 Show Recorded at the Fortune Theatre in London. Cd3 Contains the Cream of their Broadway Performances from 1962 and 1964. Album Details

What could have been

Such a shame this comedy troupe broke up. Humour with surgical precision. Roots of Python found here. You'll listen over and over again. January 4, 2007

Some of the funniest stuff ever committed to vinyl

The team of Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore was originally conceived as a potentially successful show for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1960 - hence the name. None of them had ever worked together before, or not at any rate in this configuration, and each of them went into the project with some doubts. They ended up producing one of the most savagely funny comedy shows ever, a piece of work that was to play a large part in the transformation of the British cultural landscape during the 1960s.

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. June 17, 2002

Worthy Ancestors

After Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers came the Beyond the Fringe crowd. This is one of the foundation stones of transatlantic comedy. Cook and Moore preceded Pythons Cleese and Chapman at Cambridge. (They in turn preceded Frye and Laurie.) Ripeness is all, and they had it... July 3, 2001

The launch of true satire by men who got it right 1st time

The legendary performance by 4 true geniuses. Oh, if we could only have this on vid....

I have spent a great deal of time playing this to people who finally get it. The launching pad for Monty Python, Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, et al, is right here. These 3 CDs contain the cream of the 60's satire crop by 4 very affable chaps not afraid to take convention and a sledgehammer and juxtapose the two. The material is first-rate and the performances practically flawless. One or two bits do require more visual, but the gist is just as good--gets the mind working.

Even the material that is dated (Harold Macmillan et al) holds up well because, in all honesty, have politicians really changed all that much in 40 years? I think not--it's just more public now.

Get this set by any means. You will truly treasure this gem for years to come. April 26, 2001

Your Comedy Education:

Terrific. I've just spent the entire weekend listening to certain tracks over and over. The writing is fantastic and the talents of these 4 are really amazing. The characterizations are crystal clear and masterfully layered ("Words...and Things," "TVPM," "Take a Pew" among others) so that for any performer, writer or director, "Beyond the Fringe" is an education. Two of the three CDs were recorded in London and it is interesting to compare them with the third CD, recorded in the U.S. Although I questioned my hormone balances when I paid for the thing, I'm very happy to have it as a part of my collection. For any piano players, Dudley Moore does a wonderful job with humor and music. While some of the sketches aren't nearly as topical as they were in 1961, the time gap serves to clarify the choices of the actors. Even with that, the sketches have aged well. October 9, 2000

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