In this extract originally published in the Observer on 14 January 1962, an early Soho appearance by the duo makes our critic laugh, even if he finds something essential lacking
The new revue at The Establishment (Greek Street) is an improvement on the first one. The phase of grasshopper whimsey seems happily to have ended, and the show takes up a more or less definable political position somewhere far out on the antic Left wing of the Liberal Party; in other words, its attitude is one of radical anarchism. It scoffs as the organisation mind whether Tory or Socialist (union leaders are slow-witted and company directors cold-blooded); in true Bergsonian style, it invites us to laugh, as free agents, at the spectacle of human beings who have become automata. It detests capital punishment and has a guest Cassandra in the shape of Christopher Logue, who contributes four sub-Brechtian lyrics anathematising the crimes of capitalism. These are welcome if only because they involve singing, an amenity with which the first Establishment revue hubristically dispensed.
Visually, the show is less than a feast, dark suits for the men, black dresses for the women, and bare boards for decor, relieved by snatches of black-and-white film, but the cast is better balanced than it was. Carole Simpson, a large girl with a carrying voice, has been imported to sing Mr Logue's songs (in sub-Weillian settings by Tony Kinsey and Stanley Myers), and the three male survivors from the original company are now behaving more relaxedly, like hosts instead of guests. The Id of the trio is Jeremy Geidt, who specialises in sweaty brutes and insensitive rogues. As a public-spirited psychopath, he begs for the extension of the death penalty; arguing that since it once deterred him from assaulting a Negro bus conductor it might easily prove to be society's firmest bulwark against sheep-stealing.
Meanwhile, John Fortune, a mop-shaped young man with tremulous lips, stands for the Super Ego, albeit in somewhat enfeebled form: the types he plays, which include officious 'junior executives' edgy bureaucrats and nervous smarties, all come under the beading of Insecure Ruling-Class. It is Mr Fortune who, in the role of Nato instructor, explains that the function of World War Two ("carried out," as he puts it, "with all the precision of a millitary operation") was to build up the economy of Western Europe in readiness for the struggle with Communisn. And in an item worth of those incomparably disenchanted social observers, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Mr Fortune is bitterly recognisable as a would-be lecher more skilled at preaching sexual liberty than at practising it.
But the most gifted of the Establishmentarians is John Bird, a plump presence with a monkish crop of sandy hair. Mr Bird is the pampered Ego triumphant; he specialises in complacency, in smiles knowingly smiled and pipes portentously sucked. He plays Kennedy at a Press conference, responding to every question with an opaque Emersonian generality; and we see him again as a union boss who, having slowly digested the information that phallic symbols, subtly disguised, are the secret of all advertising, comes up proudly with a suggested slogan for the next election: "Vote Labour, or your genitals will drop off." Here, as everywhere, Mr Bird's air of implied self congratulation is irresistable.
Yet despite the excellence of the cast, despite the astuteness of the anonymous author and his anonymous director, something is wrong with the show: some essential is lacking. The girls are clever and personable, but they are not encouraged to be funny: in a curious way they are frozen out, so that at times, one seems to be watching a private performance at the Cambridge Footlights Club, of which John Bird (like his employer Peter Cook) was once a prominent member. The jokes take on a glib, adolescent rattle, as in a smoking-room where nobody has been smoking for longer than ten years. And one missed that sine qua non of successful revue: a gripping, outgoing central personality for whose every entrance one waits and on whose every word one devotedly hangs. ("Beyond the Fringe," you may say, is an exception, but I ask you to imagine it without Jonathan Miller.) At The Establishment we smile: we may even laugh; but we are never transported. Reported by guardian.co.uk 9 hours ago.
The new revue at The Establishment (Greek Street) is an improvement on the first one. The phase of grasshopper whimsey seems happily to have ended, and the show takes up a more or less definable political position somewhere far out on the antic Left wing of the Liberal Party; in other words, its attitude is one of radical anarchism. It scoffs as the organisation mind whether Tory or Socialist (union leaders are slow-witted and company directors cold-blooded); in true Bergsonian style, it invites us to laugh, as free agents, at the spectacle of human beings who have become automata. It detests capital punishment and has a guest Cassandra in the shape of Christopher Logue, who contributes four sub-Brechtian lyrics anathematising the crimes of capitalism. These are welcome if only because they involve singing, an amenity with which the first Establishment revue hubristically dispensed.
Visually, the show is less than a feast, dark suits for the men, black dresses for the women, and bare boards for decor, relieved by snatches of black-and-white film, but the cast is better balanced than it was. Carole Simpson, a large girl with a carrying voice, has been imported to sing Mr Logue's songs (in sub-Weillian settings by Tony Kinsey and Stanley Myers), and the three male survivors from the original company are now behaving more relaxedly, like hosts instead of guests. The Id of the trio is Jeremy Geidt, who specialises in sweaty brutes and insensitive rogues. As a public-spirited psychopath, he begs for the extension of the death penalty; arguing that since it once deterred him from assaulting a Negro bus conductor it might easily prove to be society's firmest bulwark against sheep-stealing.
Meanwhile, John Fortune, a mop-shaped young man with tremulous lips, stands for the Super Ego, albeit in somewhat enfeebled form: the types he plays, which include officious 'junior executives' edgy bureaucrats and nervous smarties, all come under the beading of Insecure Ruling-Class. It is Mr Fortune who, in the role of Nato instructor, explains that the function of World War Two ("carried out," as he puts it, "with all the precision of a millitary operation") was to build up the economy of Western Europe in readiness for the struggle with Communisn. And in an item worth of those incomparably disenchanted social observers, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Mr Fortune is bitterly recognisable as a would-be lecher more skilled at preaching sexual liberty than at practising it.
But the most gifted of the Establishmentarians is John Bird, a plump presence with a monkish crop of sandy hair. Mr Bird is the pampered Ego triumphant; he specialises in complacency, in smiles knowingly smiled and pipes portentously sucked. He plays Kennedy at a Press conference, responding to every question with an opaque Emersonian generality; and we see him again as a union boss who, having slowly digested the information that phallic symbols, subtly disguised, are the secret of all advertising, comes up proudly with a suggested slogan for the next election: "Vote Labour, or your genitals will drop off." Here, as everywhere, Mr Bird's air of implied self congratulation is irresistable.
Yet despite the excellence of the cast, despite the astuteness of the anonymous author and his anonymous director, something is wrong with the show: some essential is lacking. The girls are clever and personable, but they are not encouraged to be funny: in a curious way they are frozen out, so that at times, one seems to be watching a private performance at the Cambridge Footlights Club, of which John Bird (like his employer Peter Cook) was once a prominent member. The jokes take on a glib, adolescent rattle, as in a smoking-room where nobody has been smoking for longer than ten years. And one missed that sine qua non of successful revue: a gripping, outgoing central personality for whose every entrance one waits and on whose every word one devotedly hangs. ("Beyond the Fringe," you may say, is an exception, but I ask you to imagine it without Jonathan Miller.) At The Establishment we smile: we may even laugh; but we are never transported. Reported by guardian.co.uk 9 hours ago.