The Fringe Front-and-Center

The British comedy revue Beyond the Fringe was a phenomenon in the early 1960s when it began life at the Edinburgh Festival and eventually made it to Broadway, following up with a sequel, with an even more remarkable cast. Not just remarkable for their talents as comic performers in the production and beyond, but in general.

The four man cast most-famously included Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, but more under the wire, but equally renown were Alan Bennett who went on to an acclaimed career as a playwright including The Madness of King George III and The History Boys. And also the remarkable Jonathan Miller -- sorry, Dr. Jonathan Miller -- who became an opera director for the National Theatre, a director of Shakespeare, and a neuropsychologist, writer and much more.

After listening to their Beyond the Fringe album for so long, it was a treat to find their hilarious sketch, "The Great Train Robbery," which I posted here a while back. And now, here's another selection from the show, their spot-on parody of Shakespear, "So That's the Way You Like It." It's a little dense for non-Shakespeare aficionados (and I include myself in this group of nons...), but it's hard not to be swept away by the sheer virtuosity of the language and vibrancy of performance.

You likely know Cook and Moore. Alan Bennett is the blond fellow, and Jonathon Miller is the other one.