Theatre
Image-Breaking
By BAMBER GASCOIGNE
A CAREFUL survey Of the people debouching on to Greek Street from the Establishment last week revealed no one faint from loss of blood, no one apoplectic from ex- cess of spleen, no one with his guts hanging out and no one with the ground cut away' from under his feet. These patrons merely looked well fed and very well amused. In other words, even after the Estab- lishment's second show, the bloody Armageddon promised by Jonathan Miller in the Observer before the first one has not taken place. 'The ranks are drawn up and the air resounds with the armourer's hammer,' he wrote: 'when battle is joined one can only hope that blood will be drawn.' But the only person who, to my know- ledge, has staggered bleeding from the Estab- lishment during its three months of combat is a bald man who was accidentally hit on the top of his head by part of an exploding harp—a somewhat old-time turn which was, apparently, in the show for a while.
Rumour has it that the Establishmentarians are beginning to regret Jonathan Miller's brazen trumpetry. And well they might. For the club has now produced a really excellent show—as funny, at a first visit, as Beyond the Fringe— and critics have come away grumbling that it is not topical and not barbed. They're right, it isn't; nor is it trying to be. The first show did try to be, taking such precise targets as Chris- topher Soames, Rend MacColl, Jomo Kenyatta and the Queen magazine; but partly because the targets were too uninteresting and partly because the wit and fantasy were too thin, the squibs misfired. The new show revels instead in the more general absurdities of our time, from England's feeble export drive to the advertising campaigns of political parties. There is only one directly topical joke—about Lord Snow- don's job—and this, though it has already been singled out for praise by the topicality-addicts, could easily have appeared in. a modern version of Airs on a Shoestring.
The vein of humour into which the establish- ment has now moved is much more purely its own. It belongs originally to Peter Cook and John Bird, who first worked together at Cam- bridge in the Footlights three years ago. When these two want to satirise a public figure, they seize not on precise and topical aspects of his policy, as a more conventional satirist would, but on his whole public personality. In Peter Cook's famous sketch of Macmillan he em- phasises the mistimed gestures, the air of bland weariness and the underlying' scorn which the manner implies. In the same way John Bird, in his parody of Kennedy in the new show, makes.
splendid use of the President's most characteris- tic gestures (and, a private joke to end private jokes, even mistimes his gesture when he men- tions Prime Minister Macmillan); but the body of Mr. Bird's sketch depends on his uproarious parody of the President's rolling neo-Johnsonian prose. He elaborates on the famous 'fear to negotiate' aphorism until he sends it spinning away into misty distances of nonsense; and, when asked what was his chief impression in his meet- ing with Chairman Khrushchev, replies, 'His arms are not so short that they do not reach his waist; nor are they so long that when he. walks they brush the ground. I recognised in him a man like other men.'
Not many statesmen are well enough known to make possible this sophisticated type of parody, and in most of the sketches the Estab- lishment style of humour takes the form of a marriage between shock and fantasy—Charles Addams, say, combined with Lewis Carroll. In an early sketch of Peter Cook's for the Foot- lights, a one-legged man came to an impresario's office to audition for the part of Tarzan. The sketch consisted entirely of the impresario's efforts to turn the eager man away, with such
conciliatory remarks as: have nothing against your right leg; but the trouble is, neither have you.' This is the vein of many of the Estab- lishment's new sketches. There is the dry statis- tical jargon of the accident-prevention expert. There is the frenzied logic of the man who argues that since he himself has been prevented from committing several murders by a last- minute 'vision of the noose,' it would be a good thing for the country if capital punishment were extended to cover all crime. And, best of all, there is the elder statesman of the Labour Party who, once the sexual undertones of modern ad- vertising have been explained to him, starts coin- ing the most outrageous slogans for Socialism. This superb sketch underlines the dilemma which faces those who believe that it is the purpose of such cabaret to alienate people. It isn't being shocking which makes it funny; it is being so funny which prevents it from being shocking.
The cast is now stronger than the original one. It is still headed by John Bird, who has become a quite excellent comedian and mimic; and music is added to the show in the form of songs by Christopher Logue. I didn't like these at first hearing, though they might grow on one and are well sung by Carole Simpson. The ballad about the hanging judge who was raped by an ape could have been very good if it were not so diffusely told; but the most immediately attractive song, about virtue not paying, was so directly Brechtian as to be, without intending it, pastiche.
The opening of the club in October was only saved by the late-night arrival of Peter Cook and his alter ego, Mr Macmillan—newly back from anywhere in the world and ready to answer questions on his trip. But this popular pair are sailing for the States with Beyond the Fringe in
September, and for some time it has seemed doubtful whether the Establishment will be able to survive without them. With this new show it has become obvious that it will. And, now that the organisers of the club have changed their image of it, one can only hope that critics and audience will rapidly follow suit and appreciate it for what it is—a den of energetid' and anarchistic humorists, not a cell of fork-tongued revolu- tionaries.
The apathy of ten years of Tory rule has left an understandable nostalgia for the ruthless and dangerous image which we have of continental cabaret between the wars. But in those wild times a Communist club, for example, could get broken up without bothering to put on a cabaret at all; and has time not perhaps sharpened the teeth of the satire in people's memory? I know very little about those cabarets, but in a new novel, Ilona, by Hans Habe, who knew his Berlin in the Twenties, there is a description of one of the satirical night clubs. Its director is driven to despair because the smart audience loves his show so much. 'We live on the masochism of the middle class,' he moans. 'They think we're court jesters. Instead of people laugh- ing' at the caricatures, the caricatures laugh at us.' These are precisely the sounds which we have heard from the cast of Beyond the Fringe and, in its early days, from the Establishment.
I wrote at length, and enthusiastically, about the Michael Elliot-Vanessa Redgrave production of As You Like It when it opened at Stratford. It has now come to the Aldwych, with very few alterations—and is as delightful as ever.
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