Beyond the Fringe (theater)

(1960-1966)
Written and performed by Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Dudley Moore.
Wikipedia Page

Beyond the Fringe may be the most influential thing I’ve talked about in this blog. It revolutionized British comedy. Without it, there would be no Monty Python, for instance.

The show is a sketch comedy written by the performers. It resembles Python with the absurdity and intellectual depth of the sketches, and also showed a penchant for discussing current events. Much of this is commonplace now, but back in 1960, there were few things that were like it.

Most of the sketches had been used in small revues and college productions. The four writers gathered together the most  successful of their writings and put it together into an evening of theater.

Dudley Moore is probably the most famous of the group. He became a movie star with roles in 10 and Arthur, making him famous all over the world. He also was a first-class pianist* and played music for the revue.

But it is Peter Cook who is recognized as being a genius of comedy. He wrote many of the sketches for the show, and UK sketch comedies are in aw of him. His main talent was his deadpan delivery of mundane lines where he managed to make everything funnier – even lines that were funny to begin with. After the show, he worked as a partner with Moore, and is at his best as the Devil in the original Bedazzled. He was also with Moore in The Wrong Box, where he gets to play off Peter Sellers.

But his movie career never gained notice. Partly because he was a genius at sketch comedy and wasn’t quite the same when he was using other people’s dialog. The only role most people are aware of is his small bit as the vicar trying to run the marriage ceremony in The Princess Bride.

The other two members of the cast also went on the stellar career.  Alan Bennett found his niche as a playwright and won a Tony Award for The History Boys. Jonathan Miller produced and directed several plays as part of the BBC Shakespeare project and directed plays for Broadway.

Beyond the Fringe ran over a year in London and moved to Broadway, with the London version continuing with a different cast. ________________________________________________________
*I saw him perform in a concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra.