Not also but only
Kenneth Hurren
8Y calling their new little show at the Cambridge Theatre Behind the Fridge — if they have not been simply prankishly esoteric — Peter Cook and Dudley Moore Would seem recklessly eager to court Comparison with a bygone frivolity called Beyond the Fringe, in which they were also involved but only as half of the company. In this one they are the entire cast and, since they ask, I'm afraid that the natural conclusion, if not necessarily logical, is nevertheless fair: this one is only half as good.
It occurs to me, just in case the confidence of Cook and Moore is misplaced, that a little sorting out may be necessary here for those who may have difficulty in remembering exactly who was Who among the original quartet. The two We have lost, then, are Alan Bennett (the bespectacled one who contributed, among Other joys, that remarkable sermon about hairy men and smooth men and life as a till of sardines) and Jonathan Miller, who later, for a time, infested television and has since devoted himself to improving the Works of lesser theatrical intellects such as Shakespeare and Sheridan. Of the two remaining in the performing dodge, Cook is the elegant, willowy fellow (a veteran fancier of the lighter stage whom I encountered in the foyer was put in mind Of a taller and slightly more robust Claude Ilulbert), while Moore, who played the Piano in the earlier show and plays an electric organ briefly in this one, looks rather small, probably because he is small. The humours of these two have become broader and cosier over the years, conceivably due to an intermittent association with television, but their jokes are still bolder than you have any right to expect of men who are affectionately known far beyond their old coterie as Pete and Dud.'
The reason why Behind the Fridge is only
I.
alf as good as Beyond the Fringe is
not, in fact, because there are only half as 'fl any performers, or because its comic ideas are any less sprightly or irreverent, but rather, I suspect, because it has lacked the selective and critical editing that a FooPle of extra wits might have brought to it. Cook and Moore themselves are not terribly acute judges of their own material, finding everything almost unremittingly f tinny and being at times so overcome With mirth that they can scarcely bring themselves to continue the performance. Even without these hold-ups, the sketches would be none too brisk in Making their points, and one or two, of course, would have been excluded altogether if they had had the benefit of sYmpathetic but stern advice. I'm sorry it !s left to me to observe that Cook's li'personation of Amin really isn't as tinny as John Bird's impersonation of a previous African leader, which it so
noticeably resembles; and even the revue's most winning item, in which an enterprising journalist named Matthew from the Bethlehem Star interviews one of the shepherds who happened, to be watching flocks on the district's most celebrated night (" Much to our surprise, the angel of the Lord came down "), would be better if it were shorter. A bit of detached and ruthless pruning is called for, and these amiable drolls clearly have too little detachment and too much ruth.
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