Beyond the Fringe

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Music reviews of Beyond the Fringe

Music Review: The show without which Python could never have been
Rating: 4 Stars

What made me take a second look at BtF, and give it a fair hearing, was Eric Idle saying in the audio CD version of 'The Pythons by the Pythons' that he worshipped BtF, bought the record, and memorised all the sketches. Which is precisely what I did with the Python routines back in the 1970s.

Some of these BtF sketches are classics that continued to be resurrected -- and improved upon -- in the 'Secret Policeman's Ball' era of the 1970s. Back in 1961, Peter Cook's EL Wisty tone was still evolving as he told the story of why he never became a judge. Dudley Moore's one-legged Tarzan, although clearly having a ball here, needed to be appreciated visually to get the full impact -- which is what you get on the recently issued Amnesty International DVDs.

Indeed Dudley is the greatest revelation here. His piano-playing and lieder mickey-takes are virtuoso performances. Forget his mucking about in 'Arthur' and his always playing second fiddle to Peter Cook's lead. Here Dudley really is the business.

There are other BtF sketches not included in this package -- such as Cook's brilliant impersonation of Macmillan, and Miller's imitation of Russell getting the better of Moore over a bag of apples -- which illustrate Python's debt to BtF. (I dount whether we would ever have had the professional logician's analysis of the witch's trial on the OST of 'Holy Grail', if BtF hadn't first done Russell versus Moore.)

The BtF show played for years in the West End, and went on to New York's Broadway. Apparently a new cast took over in 1962, but it's impossible to imagine anyone else coming close to the performance standard of these sketches.

As has been remarked elsewhere, the sound quality of these recordings is not brilliant. Actually the engineer seemed to take more care to pick up Dudley's piano than to getting the dialogue accurately recorded.

But this CD is a classic document, and really ought to be in the CD library of anyone interested in the line of Oxbridge humour that started with this, and went on to Monty Python, the Goodies (unfortunately), Fry and Laurie, and Blackadder.

The humour is fairly literary -- with some allusions to classical mythology. I'm not sure that today's typical comedy audience would appreciate all the references.

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