 | |
List Price: $24.99 | | Label: Acorn Media
Salesrank: 18894
Released: October 4, 2005 |
| Our Price: $15.84 |
| Used Price: $34.03 |
|
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
Before The Daily Show, before Saturday Night Live, even before Monty Python, there was Beyond the Fringe—the 1960s West End and Broadway hit revue that reinvented comedy. While another Fab Four was revolutionizing music, Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, and Jonathan Miller were giving birth to the British satire boom. With nothing but their brilliant writing and inspired performances, they created side-splitting comedy that held nothing and no one sacred. In the process, the four performers became international stars. It was long thought that no filmed record of the original cast existed, until this gem was discovered in a producer’s vault. A 1964 gala farewell performance in London, it features the troupe’s classic sketches, including "Man Bites God," "Aftermyth of War," and "One Leg Too Few."
Description of Beyond the Fringe:
One of the legendary landmarks of modern comedy finally gets a DVD airing: Beyond the Fringe is the sole filmed performance of the satirical revue that hatched at the Edinburgh Festival in 1960 and subsequently conquered London's West End and Broadway. The four young cut-ups thrown together for the sketch revue all went on to illustrious solo careers: Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller. Their success inspired a generation of comedians and helped birth satire as we know it.
In general, the more topical humor contained in this performance has aged uncertainly, and doesn't seem especially remarkable in the wake of political satire of the 1960s and 70s. Still, the "Aftermyth of War" sketch, which traipses through World War II nostalgia in a way that ruffled feathers back then, remains a pre-Vietnam bit of jaundice. The show's absurdist humor comes through like gangbusters; the classic Peter Cook-Dudley Moore sketch, "One Leg Too Few," about a one-legged man auditioning for the role of Tarzan, remains sublimely silly ("I've got nothing against your right leg--the problem is, neither do you").
Moore provides song parodies, while Bennett's two soliloquies (a vicar's sermon and a man who slightly knew Lawrence of Arabia) perhaps prefigure his later monologues for theater and television. Cook has a pair of bona fide masterpieces. One casts him as a detective on the case of the Great Train Robbery (Bennett: "So you feel thieves are responsible?" Cook: "Good heavens, no. I feel that thieves are totally irresponsible."). The other is "Sitting on the Bench," the rambling musings of a miner disappointed at not have been a judge. As Cook stares frozen-faced at the audience for the duration of the piece, you may get the uncanny frisson of genius.
The performance was recorded in London in 1964, during a final revival of the show. The technical quality is quite poor, but it hardly matters--this is the record of a seismic shift in comedy, and thus an essential disc. --Robert Horton
Beyond the Fringe Reviews:
"Beyond the Fringe" - Oldie but VERY Goodie!! 
2009-09-17 - Though this was filmed in the 1960s, the sketches are still brilliant today. I missed the crisp video quality, but I realized that the production had so little of the technology we have today.
The writing of these sketches and the players - Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller - are all just absolutely fantastic. Very satirical, each one is a gem.
My favorites are the songs that Dudley Moore sings and plays on the piano. The expressions on his face are priceless, and the music is exquisite. An incredible showcase of his amazing talent - and literally had me rolling on the floor.
This DVD is a classic. And it's the only recording ever made of this group and their clever work. The epitome of excellence, and the highest level of comedy that only a few can achieve.
Wish They Were Back!`
2009-09-14 - In spite of the fuzzy production values, this is a definite keeper. the irony can be understood with a smattering of memory of those days and much of it is body humor anyway. Piano, singing hilarious and Jonathon Miller is as great now as earlier. Peter Cook in his accents and impersonations is well worth the price of admission.
British sketch comedy at its finest
2008-04-12 - Sketch comedy has a long history - beginning in this country with vaudeville and burlesque, and in England with the music hall ("vaudeville isn't dead; it just moved to England"). In the States, radio and television continued the earlier traditions because the people who first moved to the new mediums were old vaudevillians. The line is clear from vaudeville to Ernie Kovacs and Sid Caesar (among others) to Saturday Night Live, Mad TV, and their contemporaries and successors.
In England, however, something happened in the middle of the last century that changed radically the course and character of the British comedy sketch. That "something" was "Beyond the Fringe". There the line travels to "At Last the 1948 Show" and its contemporaries, to Monty Python, and onward. Of course the mother country could scarcely fail to influence the colonies. After "The Kids in the Hall" influences tend to become confused and muddled. So today we will not move beyond "Beyond" - of which seminal production we luckily now have some wonderful remembrances in this recording of the final performance of the revue.
The writers and stars - indeed, the entire cast - of Fringe were Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore. They appear in this film uncannily resembling the Beatles at the start of their careers: wearing plain black suits. All of these talented gentlemen went on to considerable careers in stage and/or screen.
Bennett has thus far written or co-written 27 films and appeared in 31. He is the author of the brilliant film (and its stage-play source), "The Madness of King George".
Cook (deceased 1995) appeared in 44 films and wrote or co-wrote 17 - including the wonderful "Yellowbeard".
Miller has been active in all facets of film, including direction of a number of Shakespeare's plays and production of a number of operas.
Moore is the best-known of the quartet. He has appeared in roles in 49 films and TV series, and as himself in 58 others. He has composed 8 film scores, and so on. In Fringe his piano playing suggests talent of concert level, but the only way to be sure is to get his recording of the Grieg concerto.
In a certain way Dudley Moore is the star of this show that really has no star. He performs some of its best material on the piano. His parody of Dame Clara Haskell (the Wanda Landowska of her day, but on the piano) is to die for - but it will be lost on today's audience, most of whom won't know who Landowska was, much less Haskell. In any event, it's a minor event and not the best piano-related gibe. Moore does satires of art songs, of which the finest is a direct hit on Schubert, "Die Flabbergast". The best item has no singing: a fantasia on the March from "Bridge on the River Kwai" in the style of Beethoven. Assuming Moore wrote the piece, his wit is as unerring as his pianism.
Although Fringe had a core of material in more or less constant use, the show tended to mutate over time so that it consisted overall of about 40 or so segments. This version gives us 22 (+ 1 track that is not a sketch) . Among the best is "Aftermyth of War", a longish bit that has people reminiscing about WWII in an hilarious manner that must have seemed irreverent to the Brits, less than 20 years on. Of course, irreverence is the absolute hallmark of the best humor - and this revue is rife with it.
Another hugely funny bit is "Sitting on the Bench", a monologue I've heard in other venues, and often known as "The Coal Miner's Tale". Here a coal miner bemoans his inability to pass the test to become a judge and had to take the coal miner's test instead. "There's only one question, `What is your name?' I got 75% on that." Some of the best lines, such as the miner's rumination on the absence of falling coal in courtrooms, are missing here.
At least one routine is not to be found on the DVD nor apparently on the available CDs. This concerns Britain being unable to use the U.S. Trident submarine and thus having no remote launch platforms for its nukes. One plan is to run at the Berlin Wall, put up ladders, climbing the ladders, and throwing the bombs over. But there are plenty of others, and the DVD is funny as the dickens.
Cultural references being what they are, a good many viewers will find many of the sketches "dated". This means that they choose to blame the messengers instead of their own limitations in understanding the messages. Still, you needn't have lived through World War II to get some good laughs from "Aftermyth of War". And the good news is, there's 116 minutes of it.
If you like this sort of thing, there's more on CD. The one to get is "Beyond the Fringe: Complete", which has 3 CDs. The others are single CDs, each of which offers a limited selection, mostly duplicating the DVD. The 3-CD set has 42 tracks, but there are some duplications so that the total of different ones is 38, including 14 not found on the DVD. Two sketches from the DVD aren't on the CDs ("T.E.Lawrence" and "Art Gallery Director"), so the total DVD + CDs = 40.
Don't miss this opportunity to experience the great tap-root of the wonderful Pythons.
They're blind and deaf or liars or idiots or all of these 
2007-10-23 - THE AUDIO AND VIDEO OF THIS FLICK ARE JUST FINE!!! I find it tame and don't see what ever was so shocking about it. But I'm liking it very much just the same. Guess I'm just jaded by the gap in time. It's warm and amusing and all 4 men are perfect. I prefer Monty Python to whom I see a resemblance. I recommend you rent it before buying it to make sure you like it. I did (because I was scared off by these dishonest nincompoops who said the picture and sound were lousy, they aren't), I ordered a copy about 2 hours ago.
Still hilarious!
2007-02-06 - Although the quality of the recording shows its age (hence the rating of 4, not 5), the four guys are still enormously funny. Perhaps funnier to those of us who saw it originally (or were at least alive then!) than it might be to anyone under 50? 55? Many of the numbers are just funny in themselves and delivered with impeccable timing, but a few need some knowledge of the politics and culture of post-war England. Don't be put off by the black and white grainy image.
