The Acting Ensemble visits 1960s England with 'Beyond the Fringe'

Ironically, “Beyond the Fringe” didn’t premiere at Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Instead, the sketch comedy show made its debut at its crosstown rival, the mainstream Edinburgh International Festival.

But there was little that was mainstream about “Beyond the Fringe” in 1960.

Created and performed by Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller, the revue took the revolutionary step of satirizing formerly taboo topics for comedy, including British politics and politicians, the military, the public’s attitude toward war, the royal family and religion.

And that’s part of its appeal for Geoff Trowbridge, who’s directing The Acting Ensemble’s production of it that opens Jan. 21.

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“These were all things you didn’t normally use for comedy,” he says, “and yet these guys were willing to load up the canons and full-steam ahead.”

There’s also a parody of Shakespeare, Trowbridge says, “that takes all of the familiar tropes in a Shakespeare production and cranks them up to 11.”

“Beyond the Fringe” also proved to be an immense success, with extended runs on London’s West End and New York’s Broadway and was the first success for all four performers.

It also has since been acknowledged as jump-starting the British satire boom of the 1960s that, eventually, would lead to “At Last the 1948 Show,” “That Was the Week That Was,” Cook and Moore’s “Not Only … But Also,” and, the biggest of them all, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” although Trowbridge quickly points out that this is “more highbrow than that” and that “this isn’t Monty Python.”

From working-class to royal

With a few exceptions, Trowbridge has divvied up the sketches so that each of his actors corresponds to one of the original four: Michael Clarkson with Peter Cook, Russell Pluta with Jonathan Miller, Emily Clarkson with Alan Bennett and Cecil Eastman with Dudley Moore, which requires him to play piano, too (Moore wrote several musical pieces for the show and was a well-regarded jazz pianist).

“He had this wonderful ability to switch from being the everyday guy to posh,” Michael Clarkson says about Cook and mentions that that breadth of character, from working-class to royal, attracted him to the show. “He would point out how stupid and ludicrous certain people and situations were. He brought to life truths that weren’t spoken at the time.”

A native of Great Britain, Clarkson primarily grew up in the north, but as an “army brat,” he grew up all over the country.

Born in 1976, he also grew up on Monty Python, watching it with his father and loving it. Before he auditioned for “Beyond the Fringe,” Clarkson says, he was familiar with a couple of its sketches but not with the show as a whole, except from tracing Monty Python back to “Beyond the Fringe” and Spike Milligan, who influenced this show’s creators.

As the cast’s only native Englishman, Trowbridge says, Clarkson has helped to coach his castmates on pronunciations and phrasing as they worked on their accents.

“Honestly, I’m very happy with their accents,” Clarkson says. “Yes, there’s moments, but I’m a native English speaker, so I’ll hear it, but most American audiences won’t hear the mistakes they make.”

‘Highly intelligent absurdity’

Trowbridge describes the comedy in “Beyond the Fringe” as “highly intelligent absurdity.”

“There are sketches that rely purely on physical comedy,” he says, “but there’s another sketch where two philosophers are having a discussion on human language.”

In that sketch, “Words … Things,” Miller says during a clip from the group’s 1964 farewell performance that’s available on YouTube, “(It’s) not so much ‘why’ questions. You see, it’s ‘how’ questions.” “Why?” Bennett asks. “There you are. Need I say more?” Miller answers.

Trowbridge did worry, though, that a lot of the references would be too obscure for a modern American audience because they are specific to British politics and culture from 60-plus years ago.

To that end, he and the cast did update a few references, especially if it was just a “namedrop,” but, the director says, it “was surprisingly easy, because when it comes to politics and religion, the issues remain the same. It’s still very poignant as far as the humor is concerned.”

For instance, in one sketch, an impassioned preacher gets so caught up in his tangents that he can’t find his way back to the text and point he intended to make.

“This stopped being satire about 20 years ago, which means a lot of it is observational and how people react in moments,” Clarkson says. “A lot of it is, you’re in this position and it’s not the right position for you. … One of the ways this comedy works is that these are archetypes. People have behaved in the same ways for thousands of years, and I love that there’s a real truth to it. It’s human beings being human beings.”

For Trowbridge, British comedy is more deadpan and relies more on scenarios and characters than American humor.

For example, in one sketch about the royal family, the humor comes more from the populace’s obsessions with them than any foibles exhibited by the royals.

“(It’s) about a person who comes to the theater to see the same show night after night because he knows the theater has a royal box and he just wants to catch a glimpse of the royal family, but they’re never there,” Trowbridge says. “But he still comes every night.”

In the sketch “One Leg Too Few,” which introduced Clarkson to Cook and Moore, who continued to work together into the 1970s, an actor with one leg auditions for the role of Tarzan.

“I’ve got nothing against your right leg,” Cook tells Moore’s aspiring actor. “The trouble is neither have you.”

“The actual comedy is a lot drier, it’s a lot more subtle,” Clarkson says about the majority of “Beyond the Fringe.” “There are moments where you have slap-in-the-face moments, but they’re much less than in American comedy. … It’s a lot more expecting the audience to have intelligence and not, ‘Here’s your joke. You can laugh now.’ It’s more, ‘Here’s the joke, and we’ll let you assess it.’”

‘There’s still plenty of sitting down’

Beyond potential cultural references issues, Clarkson says he thinks it’s ambitious for an American theater — and even a British one — to produce “Beyond the Fringe” in 2022.

“It was such a different way to do comedy,” he says. “It was gentle, more subtle, whereas modern comedy, from the 1970s on, is more in-your-face. It’s a lot of work, but you’re rewarded with some really excellent writing.”

The Acting Ensemble’s cast, Clarkson says, has injected a more American and modern comedic approach to the show in a very limited way.

“We present it in a slightly more physical way than they did,” he says. “They tended to sit down, and we tend to be more vibrant. That said, there’s still plenty of sitting down.”

Onstage

• What: The Acting Ensemble presents “Beyond the Fringe”

• Where: 602 E. Mishawaka Ave., Mishawaka

• When: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 21-22 and 27-29 and at 2 p.m. Jan. 23 and 30; a talk back session follows each performance

• Cost: $17-$14

• COVID protocols: Masks are required.

• For more information: Call 574-232-2559, email info@actingensemble.com or visit actingensemble.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: The Acting Ensemble presents Britain's 1960 revue "Beyond the Fringe"