The Establishment
Theatre
By BAMBER GASCOIGNE
This brings me back to Jonathan Miller's bloodthirsty query. His article is the work of a man who saith among the trumpets, Ha, Ha, and smelleth the battle afar off. 'The ranks are drawn up and the air resounds with the ar- mourer's hammer,' he proclaims; 'when battle is joined one can only hope that blood will be drawn.' Kenneth Tynan clearly shares this idea of The Establishment when he warns the pro- prietors, in his review of their first night, that no political cabaret can be accounted a success unless at least a quarter of the audience walks out in the course of the performance.'
It has a seductive tang in the nostrils, this idea of an abattoir of sacred cows where real blood flows, But is it possible? I suspect only so at rare times in history when a community is so violently split that a man who steps into a theatre or café will know instinctively whether he is sitting down amongst friends or enemies; and if amongst enemies they have only to wish him 'Good evening' to enrage him with their sly insinuations. The class struggle provided this type of split background for the German Polemical cabarets of the Twenties and Thirties; but the Thirties have passed, and it is no longer accounted a virtue to see things in black and White.
A few days ago I assaulted, verbally, a man Who was selling the journal of the British National Party on a street-corner in Notting Hill Gate. In the course of our predictably fruit- less argument he accused me of confusing his gang with the Empire Loyalists. When I asked him the difference, he replied : 'Well, to start With. they're not even racialists.' That man might be able to write a Thirties-type cabaret Which would seem to his friends to draw buckets of thin red blood. But one of the reasons why Beyond the Fringe has such a contemporary air is that its authors follow no party line and are happy to attack anyone from any angle that presents itself.
In these more settled times the political cabaret artist finds it hard to disown his famous ances- tor, the court jester—a comic paid by the Establishment to amuse the Establishment about the Establishment. Anyone who saw the photo- graphs of Mort Sahl sitting on Kennedy's right hand at the big Democratic election dinners must surely have realised this; yet Jonathan Miller claims to be surprised that Bentleys roll up to the Fortune Theatre and Peter Cook is appalled that the majority of his club's mem- bers come from SWI. The truth is that if these jesters want to be cut in the street they are in the wrong line of business. They should be writing articles or plays. An article can present a direct challenge, with no mitigating twinkle in the eye, and a play can create a prickly character who will lodge in the mind, as Jimmy Porter has, in the way that a series of separate sketches never will. John Osborne is a particu- larly good example. The Establishment has eagerly adopted him for its gossip columns, but it has never made friends with him as it has with the Fringe quartet.
I am not suggesting that Cook and Co. are in the wrong line of business. I am merely, as ever, trying to tell them what their real business is. Their weapon is not the bludgeon, or even the dagger, it is the needle; they are not polemicists, they are satirists. One applauds them not from any partisan feeling, but because for a moment one has been able to share their vision of absurdity. The best satire flashes sparks between twin poles of fantasy and reality; and in the sudden brightness of the spark new light is thrown on some human folly. When the African politician in Beyond the Fringe is asked his views on the arrest of a colleague, he replies (approximately): 'It is a blatant violation of justice and of everything we have- ever been taught about human rights and respect for the individual, and I am in favour of it.' This ab- surdly unexpected contrast highlights the cant that is spoken about the democratic values and, at the same time, the scant attention that is paid to them. Peter Cook's superb linking of the British four-minute mile with the four-minute warning of nuclear attack is similar. And moment of brilliance like these occur throughout Beyond the Fringe.
Unfortunately they occurred all too rarely in the revue at The Establishment, written mainly by Peter Cook but performed by a cast of five new faces, only one of whom, John Bird, can be accounted funny enough for the club's inten- tions. One had the impression that in the search for significant targets the author had somehow forgotten the need to be witty about them. The blood-drawing dogma had swamped the creative. process. Some sketches, such as the pedestrian Bow Group meeting, contained too little fantasy —or imagination, if fantasy sounds too fey. Others contained too little reality, as when Christopher Soames was compared to a pig or Jomo Kenyatta revealed an urge to become Queen of England. The sketches which tried to be most hard-hitting fell flat on their faces be- cause, as anyone could have told them, the targets turned out to be cardboard; viz., Rend MacColl and The Queen.
The evening picked up when Peter Cook him- self arrived for an impromptu late-night per- formance and immediately proved himself the only real cabaret artist in the place. The besetting sin of comedians is a habit of addressing a single person as though he were an entire audience. The rare and compensating talent is an ability to address an entire audience as though it were a single person. Peter Cook has this talent in abundance, together with one of the quickest wits in Soho and outlying districts. Even by himself he assures his club a large future. But the hors d'oeuvre must brighten up. And I think it will.
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