1961-1966
'THE PYTHON GENERATION'
Pictured - Oxford's High Street, 1960s.
Oxford student theatre breeds egos. The competition for funding and performance space, along with the scramble for respect within the florid ecosystems of O.U.D.S. and the E.T.C., frequently produces some of the most driven and self-assured personalities in the university (which do not necessarily disappear upon graduation, for better or for worse). There likely exists no better example of this phenomenon than the rivalry between the British Braham Murray and the American Michael Rudman in the early 1960s - arguably the fiercest between two Oxford stage directors in living memory, its fallout rippling throughout the student body.
"Despite the fact that we were both Spurs supporters the rivalry was intense and bitter, far bitterer than anything I have encountered in the professional theatre, where we both ended up. Three years to make it in a closed society bred ruthlessness." - Braham Murray, The Worst It Can Be Is A Disaster, 2007 [source].
"A freshman could either join the Murray court or the Rudman court, but not both." - Sir Bob Scott, Win A Few, Lose A Few, 2022 [source].
For young actors like Annabel Leventon, choosing a faction could prove highly important, especially given the national attention Oxford theatrical productions tended to receive at the time.
Leventon had begun her studies in 1961 and, with haste, became a prominent figure in Rudman's productions, facilitating a prestigious student theatre career. Her rendition of the 'Willow Song' in a French tour of Othello, for instance, led to the opportunity to sing for The Fourbeats, a popular Oxford cover band which still operates today as the Dark Blues [source].
"I’d got an electric guitar and I read the N.M.E. (New Musical Express) and would check who was number one in the charts... It was seen as rather low to take an interest in popular music. We were all influenced by folk, but Oxford undergraduates had a fantastically narrow view of music. I might have been the first person to go to Oxford University owning an electric guitar and steeped in that music. …Annabel Leventon... was the queen of O.U.D.S. You’ll see on some of the publicity sometimes it was “Annabel Leventon and her band.”" - Nigel Tully (founder of the Four Beats) [source]
"Another memorable night at about this time was the Merton Christmas dance. It took place on the evening of the day that the Beatles hit 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' was released. Oxford's great undergraduate band, the Four Beats [sic], played that night, having learnt the song during the day. They played it over and over again. By the end of the night we were all word perfect." - Sir Bob Scott, Win A Few, Lose A Few, 2022 [source].
The Fourbeats epitomised the sheer variety of opportunities available to university performers during the 1960s, and against the background of the Murray-Rudman feud and its immediate aftermath, theatre proliferated. The university Classical Society began to perform plays in Greek, a venture untested in Oxford in three decades [source], while the individual colleges (including University College or 'Univ', the oldest of the lot) encouraged their own internal comedy and drama groups. Some of these pre-dated the 1960s by a considerable degree - the Worcester College Buskins drama society was founded in 1902 and is still going today [source].
Independent comedy cabaret was an especially entrenched student pursuit in the University of Oxford. Small teams of students could earn good pay by performing sketches and songs at balls or large parties, all with no outside creative influence from university administration or theatre companies. This environment gestated some of the most conspicuous comedic voices of the era - including one particular modern history student who had begun study at Brasenose College in 1962. With previous theatrical experience in his native Sheffield [source], it took little time for Michael Palin to begin constructing and performing cabaret sets alongside his creative partner, Robert Hewison. The writing of these sets (which included skits about Palin eating Tide washing powder) almost always took place in Hewison's dorm [source] - to this day, Palin credits Hewison for directing him towards a life in show business [source].
In March 1963, Braham Murray's production of A Man of All Seasons with the Univ Players was a lauded final gem in the Oxford Playhouse's schedule, before the venue was closed for renovation [source]. The prestige of the scheduled reopening that following winter seems to have stoked the rivalry between Braham Murray and Michael Rudman to an unprecedented degree. Rudman had been elected the president of O.U.D.S. and Murray the president of the E.T.C. - the first play of the new Playhouse would be Rudman's Twelfth Night, the second an as-of-yet-unwritten dark comedic venture with Murray called Hang Down Your Head and Die. The auditions for both were in 1963 Michaelmas (autumn) term, on the exact same day. The student theatre body was staring down its most glaringly binary choice of allegiance yet.
Among those who now aligned themselves with Murray were first-year actors Adele Weston, David Wood and Bob Scott, as well as pianist John Gould - as would be seen, the fates of these four students would be inextricably bound across their Oxford careers and beyond. Indeed, Scott had explicitly turned down a role in Rudman's Twelfth Night in order to work with Murray - only he and one other undergraduate (Michael Emyrs Jones, later known in his acting career as Michael Elwyn) received casting offers from both directors that day.
Leventon, on the other hand, remained creatively loyal to Michael Rudman.
Since Beyond The Fringe, satire had dominated Oxford theatre - the 1962 and 1963 Oxford Revues being especially unabashed in this regard (the latter being literally titled as a censored four-letter expletive '****'). As with any trend though, what was previously extreme or exciting risks becoming a monotonous norm through exposure. Braham Murray's Hang Down Your Head and Die, produced by the E.T.C. and scripted by David Wright, was a necessary escalation of political commentary - a direct and furious criticism of Western capital punishment policy, via the medium of a circus performance. Such a revue (though not an O.T.G. Oxford Revue, to clarify) would embody an intentionally uncomfortable, and highly potent, juxtaposition.
" ...the following murders shall be capital murders, that is to say.—
(a) any murder done in the course or furtherance of theft;
(b) any murder by shooting or by causing an explosion;
(c) any murder done in the course or for the purpose of resisting or avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest, or of effecting or assisting an escape or rescue from legal custody;
(d) any murder of a police officer acting in the execution of his duty or of a person assisting a police officer so acting;
(e) in the case of a person who was a prisoner at the time when he did or was a party to the murder, any murder of a prison officer acting in the execution of his duty or of a person assisting a prison officer so acting." - Homicides Act 1957.
"...Murray’s tour de force, a revue-style production on the theme of capital punishment entitled Hang Down Your Head and Die...perhaps the most remarkable achievement of post-war Oxford student theatre." - Humphrey Carpenter, O.U.D.S.: A Centenary History of the Oxford University Dramatic Society 1885–1985, 1985.
Michael Palin and Robert Hewison had also joined the Hang Down Your Head and Die circle as writers, while a Mr. Terry Jones (a third-year St Edmund's Hall student of English literature, with whom Palin and Hewison were only passingly familiar) took on a performing role.
"The governor and the assistant governor and the chaplain all shake my hand. Then the executioner does, and as he does so he swings me round and pinions my arms. It’s then that the whole bloody façade is exposed for what it is - they come in and politely shake your hand and then they take you out and hang you." - Terry Jones (in the role of a handyman sentenced to death), Hang Down Your Head and Die, 1964.
Pictured - two students dressed as ringmasters, along with David Wood as a clown, perform a dance number in Hang Down Your Life and Die.
"The bulk of the material consisted of parodic comedy, song and dance routines, interspersed with mimed sketches and set speeches presenting the `official view' delivered po-faced by an onstage Narrator often against the backdrop of comic routines illustrating his words. There is no doubt that the sympathies of the show's creators were deeply hostile to capital punishment and that their intentions in staging it were essentially polemical." - Neville H Twitchell, Politics of the Rope, 2009 [source].
It was inevitable that the righteous ferocity of Hang Down Your Head and Die fell foul of the very political authorities it sought to critique. Severe legal adversity came from the 121-year-old decrees of the Theatres Act - the law which stated that every play script (be it scrawled by student or professional hands) must be assessed and, if deemed necessary, censored for perceived good taste by the Lord Chamberlain [source]. Four years prior, Beyond the Fringe, under the Theatres Act, had seen a stage direction changed from 'enter two outrageous old queens' to 'enter two aesthetic young men' [source].
"Our scripts came back with several scenes blue-pencilled out... We were appalled but the shock was turned to our advantage wonderfully. These episodes got national publicity in the hands of our ebullient PR man, James Burnett-Hitchcock. We managed to mobilise the next Lord Chancellor, the deeply distinguished Gerald Gardiner QC, to make protest about egregious censorship, claiming it was politically motivated." - Sir Bob Scott, Win A Few, Lose A Few, 2022 [source].
"...David [Wright] and I showed up at the office of the Assistant Controller...who effectively was in charge of censorship. …Gardiner sat silently at the back of the room. Finally he spoke [to the Assistant Controller]: 'This is clearly a case of political censorship. At the next election there will be a Labour government and I will be Lord Chancellor. I shall abolish your office. I suggest you listen to these gentlemen.'" - Braham Murray, The Worst It Can Be Is A Disaster, 2007 [source].
The Lord Chamberlain still refused to budge in the case of some edits, even in the face of credible existential threat to his position, but the production used the imposed limitations to its advantage - including in how it depicted the tortuous 1953 execution of American couple Julius and Ethel Rosenberg by electric chair [source].
"You could have heard a pin drop. One night a lady in the audience fainted." - Sir Bob Scott, Win A Few, Lose A Few, 2022 [source].
Pictured - publicity poster design for Hang Down Your Head and Die.
Between its legal obstacles and squeamish audiences, the artistic momentum of Hang Down Your Head and Die may have been fatally attenuated. Instead, the production's associated clashes and controversies emerged as an extraordinary advertising tool and contributor to its success [source] - every night at the Oxford Playhouse sold out, a crucially indisputable victory for Braham Murray over Michael Rudman and the relative inconsequence of his Twelfth Night. Graciously, Rudman attended the February 1964 premiere of his adversity's triumph [source], as did a platoon of enthused press.
In spite of the substantial promotion of its apparent social radicalism, Hang Down Your Head and Die retained numerous examples of the day's distasteful standards. The production's circus format included, alongside an expected array of ringleaders and acrobats, minstrelsy - a foul reflection of a time in which entertainment employing black-face was readily available, with media outlets aggressively dismissing of any outcry from people of colour [source].
"It was a sign of the times that I accepted without question the role of the black-faced clown, which meant blacking up with a large painted white mouth and eyes like a Minstrel." - Sir Bob Scott, Win A Few, Lose A Few, 2022 [source].
"Revue. ...developed from the minstrel show... " - Peter Gammond and Peter Clayton, A Guide to Popular Music, 1960.
Present against the backdrop of such systemically accepted bigotry was Hope McIntyre, a Black zoology student [source] who led the show's squad of female performers with an ostensible air of glamour [source]. Little else is verifiably known about McIntyre, other than an apparently marital name change to McIntyre Stewart, a daughter named Claire [source], her efforts to assemble a tome commemorating her secondary school's 80th anniversary, and her passing circa 2005 [source]. It seems bizarre to a modern decent observer that McIntyre had to perform alongside minstrelsy in Hang Down Your Head and Die - but such was the extent to which the racist practice was entrenched and uncritiqued by white performers and audiences.
Another prejudice which has been acknowledged by many of the cast in retrospect is the differential treatment of male and female players.
The most shocking example occurred after Braham Murray was visited by professional theatrical producer Michael Codron, who had enjoyed a performance of Hang Down Your Head and Die the previous evening. The show was offered a six week spring run at London's Comedy Theatre (now the Harold Pinter Theatre [source]) - with a cruel caveat.
It was a transparent expression of how Oxford student theatre enforced a status quo of female subservience, even within the self-acclaimed progressive ideology of the E.T.C. Incidents in student theatre such as this were surely a reason why 1964 would also be the year in which lobbying (particularly from English Language student Maria Aitken [source]) finally forced O.U.D.S. to give women equal status within the society to men [source]. The first female president of O.U.D.S., Diana Quick, came to power four years later [source].
With Braham Murray's compliance with Codron's request, the cast found themselves in an unsteady balance between playing to London audiences and fretfully preparing for their university exams in Oxford.
Hang Down Your Head and Die was seen by the capital's most prestigious residents. Princess Margaret attended one performance - when Bob Scott emitted an involuntary spray of saliva during a spirited musical number, the royal reportedly shielded her dignity with a conveniently wielded play programme [source]. The cast also rubbed shoulders with then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maudling, albeit to the indirect detriment of the show itself.
"We thought we gave a terrific performance that night. Braham violently disagreed and gave us a serious bollocking. I wondered whether his reaction had been fuelled by the fact he had not been invited to the party." - Sir Bob Scott, Win A Few, Lose A Few, 2022 [source].
Almost reassuringly, little has changed in student theatre in the last six decades.
"Apprentice performers grifting for beer money. Avoid - you will never get that hour back" - Audience review of The Oxford Revue Will See You Now, 2023
The success of Hang Down Your Head and Die facilitated its further transfer to New York that same year, with Braham Murray directing a new cast within 46th Street's Mayfair Theatre (now the Sony Hall [source]) - yet it proved critically fruitless. The American theatrical palate was phased less by a script which had been barely changed for US audiences, and more by the production's relentless pessimism and political directive [source].
"Occasionally it makes a vivid point with a sardonically amusing flair. It recalls the comment of a prison official that Englishmen are much better at taking their punishment than foreigners. Then James Rado and Remak Ramsay [two new cast members] sing ‘The English Way to Die,’ written by David Wood with a deadpan drollery... But the ‘entertainment’ is not aware when it is not entertaining. The determination to get the audience to join in the chorus of one number becomes almost hysterical. Is it possible that Hang Down Your Head and Die could learn something from the clean, swift English way?" - The New York Times, 1964 [source].
Though Hang Down Your Head and Die was certainly obvious in its messaging, it is unlikely to have swung public opinion to any real degree. Neville H Twitchell discusses the play alongside an Irish work The Quare Fellow.
"Both [shows] were poignant and powerful works that doubtless animated their audiences and provoked public debate, reflecting as they did major contemporary concerns. But it is questionable whether either play had any significant impact upon the balance of public opinion or the course of political events. Theatre audiences were, then as now, minuscule and drawn substantially from a small metropolitan elite wholly unrepresentative of the general population. The two plays' polemical messages would likely have served only to confirm prejudices not shake them."
- Neville H Twitchell, Politics of the Rope, 2009 [source].
Firm majority support for capital punishment persisted in the British public throughout the entire 20th century [source] - falling below 50%, for the first time on record, in 2014 [source]. When the death penalty was at last banned in England, Scotland and Wales in 1965, it was within a larger suite of progressive policy enacted by the incoming Labour government [source]. Sydney Silverman, the Scouse politician who had introduced the legislation after occupying an abolitionist platform since 1948 [source], is said to have graciously credited the performers of Hang Down Your Head and Die, even if in an only symbolic fashion [source].
A more valid significance of Hang Down Your Head and Die is in how it developed and matured the potential remit for Oxford student comedy and revue, beyond even Beyond The Fringe. At the same time, this also raised the expectations of what Oxford student theatre could theoretically be, the effects of which are key to understanding the reaction to student output across 1965 and 1966.
One case study is the 1965 E.T.C. musical comedy You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver. By now, Braham Murray and Michael Rudman were invested in Shakespeare plays beyond Oxford - Murray was directing A Winter's Tale in Birmingham [source], while Rudman was working with Judi Dench on Measure for Measure in Nottingham [source]. The remaining power vacuum in the heart of Oxford student theatre was soon enjoyed by newer talent. David Wood, formerly from the cast of Hang Down Your Head and Die, rose to direct You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver, with melodic contributions from the pen of John Gould.
Pictured - promotional poster for You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver.
"For the first time in many years, E.T.C. is presenting a full-scale musical as the Summer Major, in place of a revue... It concerns one Guy Ffolkes who plans to achieve independence for the remote island of Amnesia by blowing up the Governor-General's house, with the aid of a young scientist, who does his best to modernise the island. The Governor-General and his wife, however, are still literally living in the 19th century and it is not long before their daughters Amanda and Zenobia complicate the action still further..." - You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver record cover, 1965 [source].
A rare surname today, Ffolkes is most commonly associated with Jamaica [source], a newly independent British Commonwealth realm at the time and a sizeable influence on the Amnesian setting - a country caught between colonial chains and a free future, and a nebulous, dreamlike locale for many in Britain.
"As our title - You Can’t Do Much Without A Screwdriver - suggests, our aims are universal. We do not merely talk at the human condition - which, of course, we do - but offer dramatic and kaleidoscopic views of Amnesian history - which, of course, it is." - You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver programme, 1965 [source]
While Hang Down Your Head and Die rehearsals had been disciplined and moderated, with none scheduled for mornings to allow for lecture attendance, Wood ran three intense sessions every day to accommodate You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver's complex 30-person choreography. The lead Amnesian revolutionary was played by Ian Marter, who would, barely a decade later, portray the Doctor Who companion Harry Sullivan. Bob Scott was cast as Governor-General Sir William Bogus-Bogus, with Adele Weston and Diana Quick as his daughters.
Some of the themes touched upon by the production - political upheaval and the criticism of government- align with those in Beyond the Fringe and Hang Down Your Head and Die. However, while You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver may appear to satirise colonialism at first, it was actually comparatively apolitical, pursuing an more farcical angle instead. The Caribbean setting was, for example, merely a vehicle for an innocuous air of uncomplicated humour. The band of modern revolutionaries rallied by Guy Ffolkes are distracted from their explosive scheme by the allure of Victorian belles. The screwdriver alluded to in the title was an actual object which ensured a saccharine conclusion of the plot via near-magical intervention.
The collapse of the British Empire had been a confounding factor in indirectly instigating the early 1960s 'satire boom', yet there was seemingly little appetite from performers to satirically approach the actual subject of imperial collapse with any real vigour. Even the revolutionary Beyond The Fringe exhibits restraint in this regard. Its most relevant segment, 'Black Equals White', is an unfocussed (and poorly aged) gambol through British perceptions of African politics and racism - while assuredly associated with the theme of decolonisation, it is never pursued to an equivalent depth or detail to other topics in the show.
Perhaps the minutiae of imperial collapse were too conceptually distant from Oxford, especially with the attenuation of the Indian Institute (now the Oxford Martin School) and other university centres for colonial administration [source]. Perhaps decolonisation was still too sore a source of national embarrassment at the time - even for those who would not care to admit it. Whatever the case, You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver opted for a lighter pantomime tone, a naive return to the same spirit as shows from the Edwardian period. It was thus widely considered to be exhaustingly unfashionable. The production's spread of middling reviews loudly decried its archaic nature and risklessness, especially given its debut a mere year after Hang Down Your Head and Die.
"An inoffensively old-fashioned piece of work almost on the Savoyard pattern [comparable to Gilbert and Sullivan]…" - The Times review of You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver, 1965.
"I admit, I find it rather sad, that young people should be able to deal with colonialism in such a nonpartisan way..." - Review of You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver, 1965.
The reception of You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver did little to hamper respect for its cast and creative leads. They entered their final year of Oxford student theatre as venerated actors - Bob Scott accepted the presidency of O.U.D.S. and, motivated by the graduation of many comedic stalwarts the previous term, established a new independent cabaret group alongside David Wood and John Gould.
Such veneration also led to a vibrant social life, including encounters with many future figures of note through the E.T.C. - which, at the time, had a relatively new sketch troupe of its own called the Etceteras [source]. Unlike the Edinburgh Fringe's Oxford Revue, the Etceteras would specialise in revues performed in Oxford.
By far the most memorable celebrity interaction that academic year involved the most prestigious and maritally turbulent pair in Classic Hollywood. As O.U.D.S. president, Bob Scott was charged with running the 1966 'O.U.D.S. Major' play in February - the nucleus of the entire student theatre year. Tipped to headline the show, Scott had hoped to adapt the Orson Welles film Chimes at Midnight, but he was swiftly presented with an alternative opportunity by Nevill Coghill, the man who had founded the E.T.C. thirty years prior.
"He told me that he had persuaded Richard Burton, whom he had known well during Burton's six months at Oxford during the war, to come back to his 'alma mater' to play Marlowe's Dr Faustus.. It had also been agreed that his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, might be entrusted with the non-speaking role of Helen of Troy! The rest of the large cast would be students... How, as they say, could I say no?"- Sir Bob Scott, Win A Few, Lose A Few, 2022 [source].
The Oxford University Theatre Fund charity supported theatre in the city from 1964 to 1992 [source], its funds raised by productions including You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver. A Burton/Taylor-led O.U.D.S. Major would raise good money for the Oxford Playhouse - Burton would also fund a new set of reading rooms next to The Gloucester Arms (now The White Rabbit) [source]. These would later become the Burton Taylor (BT) Studio theatre [source].
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor arrived at Oxford on January 31st for ten days of practice sessions, at which point Dr Faustus's undergraduate performers had been already preparing for two months. To avoid press interference, a locked-down gymnasium in the St Aldates Police Station hosted rehearsals, between which the Hollywood couple are said to have loved the Oxford student theatre social scene and its alcohol-laden parties. Taylor would freely give away her husband's clothes to students she deemed to be poorly dressed, and even kissed David Wood on the lips for his birthday [source]. Bob Scott also befriended the famous pair, accompanying Taylor to Marks & Spencers to pick up new tights [source].
All seven performances of Dr Faustus sold out, in spite of heightened ticket prices, Elizabeth Taylor playing a non-speaking role, and some reasonable criticism at the difference in acting ability between Richard Burton and O.U.D.S. members. An album of the play was produced, along with a feature film for Columbia Pictures, yet David Wood and Bob Scott did not attend the filming dates in Rome that summer. They, along with John Gould and Adele Weston, had their own, more comedic, plans - a new musical revue called Four Degrees Over - which were financially accelerated by a fateful post-Faustus party at Oxford's Randolph Hotel.
With the equivalent of almost £6000 in modern currency elicited from the Hollywood couple, Four Degrees Over toured the country prior to its Edinburgh appearance. A solid debut in the Oxford Playhouse was followed by performances at Bristol and, on a particularly memorable day, the King's Lynn Festival.
Some early reviews were undoubtedly buoyed by family connections - one Guardian journalist who lavished the show with especially hefty praise was a friend of Bob Scott's father, Commonwealth diplomat Sir David Aubrey Scott. Still, flattering comparison was readily drawn by journalists between Four Degrees Over and probably its most obvious point of reference, Beyond The Fringe.
"Four Degrees Over is hardly less good than Beyond The Fringe... but whereas the social commentary in The Fringe was grim and sombre, the tone here is light and gay, notwithstanding a sting of acid every now and then." - Review of Four Degrees Over, 1966.
"Some of it has been done before, no doubt. But you can't strike a subject off the list of possibilities every time a good number is written about it, or humourists would go out of business in a very short time. The important thing is that the treatment should be fresh, and the viewpoint the viewpoint of our own time." - Four Degrees Over record cover, 1966 [source].
Nurtured on the cabaret stages that once graced Alan Bennett, it was frankly inevitable that Four Degrees Over should trace similar creative trails to its predecessor. The comedic descendant to Beyond The Fringe's 'Take A Pew' sketch, for instance, was Rock of Ages, an upbeat melodic commentary on the freefall of religious observance amongst the young throughout the 1960s.
"It seems that affluent and well-educated youth were those most likely to give up church-going in this period... By the later 1960s all of the larger Protestant denominations in Britain were suffering serious losses, and nearly all forms of measurable religious activity were affected... above average levels of decline were found in southern dioceses close to London, and sometimes including London suburbs, such as Guildford, Chelmsford, Rochester, Oxford, Ely, and St Edmundsbury and Ipswich." - Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s, 2007 [source]
Four Degrees Over retained many now-dated elements too. The lament 'Blue, Black and White' saw Bob Scott perform minstrelsy, as he had previously for Hang Down Your Head and Die - while Scott applied no actual make-up for the role, his exaggerated vocal intonations transparently display an uncomfortable comedic intent to a modern listener.
The positive reception for Four Degrees Over was noticed by Michael Codron, the London producer of Hang Down Your Head and Die, who called David Wood after the show's opening night.
Similarly to Hang Down Your Head and Die, Codron had obsessive demands concerning women's involvement in the show.
The four performers were hurriedly flown from Edinburgh to London, facing press coverage across the month of September - it was widely expected that Four Degrees Over would be as lucrative and artistically significant as previous Oxford-associated revues had been on the West End. As with Beyond The Fringe, George Martin was contracted to record and produce the show's LP, his arrangements on the chart-topping 'Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine' having released just a month earlier (indeed, some promotional photography for Four Degrees Over deliberately parodied the shadowy cover art of the album With The Beatles).
![PCL200687[55822].jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cef976_5b323de0a2d94f5a923e7981bd954e33~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_582,h_554,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/cef976_5b323de0a2d94f5a923e7981bd954e33~mv2.jpg)
Pictured - An illustration representing Four Degrees Over in Punch [source], the weekly humour magazine from which the modern definition of 'cartoon' originates [source] - drawn by the publication's art editor and theatrical caricaturist, William Hewison (seemingly no relation to Robert Hewison).
Four Degrees Over was posited as another theatrical revolution. Why wasn't it?
"We weren't a flop and we weren't a hit... It was an experience for all of us but in different ways. By now we were ex-students (I left without finishing my Pass Degree) [hence the pun of the title Four Degrees Over] and thinking about the future. John Higgins, the FT [Financial Times] Drama Critic, described Adele as a stocky brunette... and she was furious - 'I am not going to go through life with strange men allowed to call me stocky in public journals'."- Sir Bob Scott, Win A Few, Lose A Few, 2022 [source].
Four Degrees Over was well-reviewed and endowed with a substantial advertising budget - the wane of its audiences did not correspond to a lack of talent or promotional effort. A poor translation of Oxford cabaret material to a 452-seat West End venue [source], the rippling effects of a violent anti-Vietnam-War protest on London tourism [source], the show's excessively cheery demeanour, or even just the creative and physical exhaustion of an extended theatrical tour, are all credible contributors to its relative lack of success. However, it also seems that the artistic trajectory desired by theatre-goers was not an advancement within the 'satire boom', but a shift away from the 'satire boom' entirely. Some years before in fact, with such a sentiment in mind, Michael Palin and Robert Hewison had written a cabaret number titled 'I Will Never Go Beyond The Fringe' [source].
Advancements in British communication technology throughout the decade - from participation in worldwide satellite networks [source] to the innovation of the 'Empress' digital telephone exchange [source] - had increased the country's international connectivity, resulting in a greater and more immediate awareness of global politics. This scientific leap was an important new dynamic in the ongoing societal shifts that had previously launched the ‘satire boom’, and has been credited with the increased student activism that defined the UK, Europe and USA by the mid-1960s [source]. Therein lay the issue - by 1966, the most common societal reaction to injustice was no longer wry satire but active protest.
Mocking the authority figures and processes of archaic British regimes - the underlying thesis of the 'satire boom' - was also no longer a novelty or priority in a whole world of now more visible issues, especially since a traditionally aligned Conservative government had only recently been voted out of office [source]. The aforementioned anti-Vietnam-War protests in London were not so much a direct factor in Four Degrees Over’s reduced attendance, as a symptom of a more internationally focussed cultural discourse that had doomed the show before it had even begun.
The first generation of revues - apolitical musical delights - had survived a century. The second generation - that of satire - had lasted half a decade. It is damning that Beyond The Fringe and Four Degrees Over begun their West End runs five years apart, but both closed in the same year of 1966 [source].
A new 'third period' of British comedy history rose from the remains of the 'satire boom' - one that disguised its political commentary, if it had any, beneath the silly and subversive. Early endeavours into surreal territory, such as with the BBC Home Service's The Goon Show [1951-1960] created by Spike Milligan, could almost be considered as a coping mechanism for an increasingly dour national mood - approaching societal issues through sheer inanity.
"The bizarre situations and plot twists that Milligan created led to comparisons with the works of Beckett, Ionesco, and other staples of the absurdist canon. …The program is a product of very uncertain times... Milligan's transfer of the very real doomsday fears of the 1950s to more mundane, or more outlandishly fictional, frames of reference may have been unconscious, but it was far from accidental." - Rick Cousins, Spike Milligan's Accordion: The Distortion of Time and Space in The Goon Show, 2016 [source].
The performers inspired by the work of Milligan and others would produce the brand of humour known as 'Pythonesque' - a plausible beginning for which, at least within the world of Oxford comedy, may well be the Oxford Revue of 1964. This exhibit now returns to 1964, for a narrative parallel to You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver and Four Degrees Over.
* * *
Pictured - a view from Johnston's Terrace, Edinburgh.
"Edinburgh was unlike any other city I'd been to...I was from Sheffield and really I don't think I'd been to Scotland ever... and Edinburgh had this slightly fairy-tale feel to it..." - Michael Palin, The Fringe, Fame and Me, 2022 [source].
The 1964 O.T.G. - the Oxford student body for Edinburgh Fringe ventures - was patently a sizeable
administrative effort from over twenty-five credited individuals. These include Michael Rudman, Braham Murray's theatrical nemesis, who was simultaneously co-directing the group and coordinating its production of A Spring Song (the British stage premiere of a well-reviewed Australian melodrama [source]). Even Rudman's first wife, Veronica (née Bennett) [source], was involved with the wardrobe department. In contrast to the scale and complexity of Oxford's overarching Fringe bureaucracy, the O.T.G.'s Oxford Revue was tiny - the show had a cast of just five actors.
Through such selectivity of performers, inadvertently, came history. The cabaret double-act of Michael Palin and Robert Hewison are credited with writing many Revue sketches (including 'Who Would Have Thought', 'Oratio Obliqua' and '"Halt Who Goes There? Friend Or Foe?"'), but only Palin was actually cast in the show itself - as was Terry Jones. Hewison, meanwhile, played double bass tuba in the accompanying house band.
The 1964 Oxford Revue may have been the first time Michael Palin and Terry Jones shared a stage without Robert Hewison (Palin and Hewison had initially just been writers for Hang Down Your Head and Die, but joined the cast together in later performances). No animosity between the students is recorded - indeed, Hewison and Jones worked together on the designing and distribution of O.T.G. publicity material during the 1964 Fringe.
"DOUGLAS FISHER: The director of this year's revue, Doug is in Edinburgh for his third year running... He is 22 and very honest...
"MICHAEL PALIN: Michael is 21... he appeared in "Hang Down Your Head and Die" in the West End. This is his first visit to Edinburgh, and he returns to Oxford for his third year of History. He loves the place." - The Oxford Revue leaflet, 1964.
For her last summer as a student, Annabel Leventon finally had an opportunity to extend her theatrical abilities beyond straight drama and appear as a cast-member of the Revue for the first time.
While Robert Hewison remained as Michael Palin's primary writing collaborator, many segments of the 1964 Oxford Revue are credited to the duo of Palin and Doug Fisher.
"'Once upon a time, there lived a queen who lived in a lovely palace with her husband. But it came to pass that evil men were plotting the most hideous crime against the lovely queen. Sinister music, dun dun dun!'" - Michael Palin describing 'How Robbers Planned To Steal The Queen's Crown' (by Palin and Fisher), The Fringe, Fame and Me, 2022 [source].
John Gould was also involved with the composition of all but two of the Revue's musical numbers. 'Song About A Toad', for example, was written by Gould and Terry Jones especially for Annabel Leventon (though this November 1964 iteration is sung by Adele Weston).
"...we performed a version of the Manfred Mann hit ‘5-4-3-2-1’, which we re-christened ‘R-S-P-C-A’. It required the cast to line up on stage in a blackout. The only access was a flight of very steep stairs. Terry was halfway up the stairs when out of the darkness came a loud discordant ear-splitting crash, a moment’s silence, followed by a plaintive high-pitched cry. ‘Oh no! I’ve broke my sodding guitar’. It wasn’t Johnny Cash, but it was a wonderfully endearing moment." - Michael Palin, 2020 [source].
The 1964 Oxford Revue sold out (despite a 10.30pm start time), earning it an additional run at London's Establishment Club [source]- a comedy venue on Greek Street, Soho, co-owned by Beyond The Fringe performer Peter Cook [source]. The Establishment is now most associated with the heights of the 'satire boom' and, by 1964, was nearing its closure. Revue performances within the confines of the Club strike a different tone in a way - a new generation of comedy, physically within the skeleton of the previous.
Some cast-members of The Oxford Revue had already graduated, with Doug Fisher and Terry Jones both involved with another show touring the United States. Those who returned for the 1964 Michaelmas term kept refining the more absurdist humour established at the 1964 Edinburgh Fringe, largely via the semiregular 'Weekend Revues' of the Etceteras troupe. These shows tended to consist of two Sunday performances (5pm and 8.15pm), with participation necessitating only a pre-existing membership at the E.T.C. and a termly fee of 1 shilling (or 2 shillings and 6 pence yearly) [source]. The 'Weekend Revues' functioned an ideal platform on which to experiment with comedic tact and taste - for not only Michael Palin and Robert Hewison, but Adele Weston, Bob Scott and David Wood (two years before the first performance of Four Degrees Over).
Some Oxford comedy shows immediately before or after the 1964 Oxford Revue (aside from those previously discussed) included:
- Keep This To Yourself, the 1964 summer musical revue of the E.T.C. (2nd to 6th June), directed and written by Michael Palin and Robert Hewison - though Terry Jones is credited with the idea of the 'Desert Song' [source]. The plot involved an entertainment agency that sends a working class music-hall comic (played by Palin) to a bootcamp to turn him into a pop star [source]. The cast included Bob Scott, as well as Mick Sadler, a fellow student whom Palin considered to be among the most humorous in Oxford. Ever the Francophile, Sadler would eventually became the first English professor of French at the Sorbonne University of Paris.
"He was very distinctive... with a round expressive face and a head of fair curly hair which gave him the air of an absent-minded professor. He was energetic, both intellectually and physically, and his slightly protruding eyes sparkled as ideas spilled out of him." - Michael Palin, 2022 [source]
"It is a remarkable achievement for Oxford's leading cabaret artists, but they cannot quite sustain their talents for a whole evening... The show being neither revue nor musical comedy can weaken its impact...Items good in themselves fail to cohere: the secretaries tell us how sexy they are but don't flirt with anybody... Goonish sketch situations obscure the plot." - John Penycate, Cherwell, 1964 [source]
- Etcetera Etcetera, a November 1964 Weekend Revue directed by Michael Palin and consisting of many repurposed segments from the Oxford Revue. New additions included a strict dress code (polka dots for men, pink dresses for women - Keep This To Yourself had similarly uniform costumes), music by the band the Four Beats (though Leventon was no longer involved), and the addition of some established Oxford cabaret material. 'Birds Are All The Same' was penned by David Wood before he had even arrived at Oxford, as part of a song-writing competition for the rock group Joe Brown and the Bruvvers. One contemporary review described the show as the best of its kind since Beyond the Fringe.
- Yours Etcetera, a 7 February 1965 Weekend Revue directed by David Wood and John Gould and featuring Diana Quick (who would appear in You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver later that year) along with 'guest appearances' from Michael Palin, Robert Hewison and Mick Sadler (all of whom were preparing for their final examinations). The show is historically interesting for including sketches from both the 1964 Oxford Revue ('How Robbers Planned To Steal The Queen's Crown') and 1966's Four Degrees Over ('Rock of Ages').
Pictured - the programme for Yours Etcetera, from the collections of Peter Wiles, the show's stage manager [source].
- The Oxford Line, the 1965 Edinburgh Fringe Oxford Revue directed by Michael Palin. Little is recorded of the show, other than the general acceptance that its quality paled in comparison to the 1964 Revue.
- With All Etceteras, a 14 November 1965 Weekend Revue directed by Simon Brett (who would appear in the 1966 and 1967 Oxford Revues, become the president of O.U.D.S. and launch BBC's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [source]) and featuring David Wood (the Etceteras chairman at the time) and Adele Weston. Material later used in Four Degrees Over also appears here ('Taking the Mikado', a Sinophobic parody of Gilbert and Sullivan), as do sketches written by Michael Palin (though he had graduated and left Oxford at this point) [source].
The 1964-1965 academic year, expectedly, also saw Palin attempt to balance his connections with both Robert Hewison and Terry Jones, despite the fact that Jones had graduated and was working a modest job at the BBC.
In spite of an entire year of other comedic performance, the importance of specifically the 1964 Oxford Revue remained enormous in the personal lives of those involved. Upon his own graduation, Palin reunited with his former Revue cast members Jones, Doug Fisher and Annabel Leventon to form a London-based cabaret act.
However, the most significant impact of the 1964 Oxford Revue was indirect, purely an extension from the reaction of a single audience member. Acclaimed television presenter David Frost saw Michael Palin and Terry Jones on the Edinburgh Fringe stage and, even a year later, recalled the extent to which their unique talents and rapport had resonated with him. If either Palin or Jones had not been arbitrarily cast in the Revue's small cast, David Frost may not have made contact with the two performers who would eventually be part of the most famous British comedy collective ever - the collective that Frost would unwittingly instigate.
Pictured - the Monty Python troupe at Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl, 1982. Michael Palin and Terry Jones are sat to the furthest left.
"In its style and subject matter, the [Monty Python show] Flying Circus experimented with a complex form of comedy that wreaked havoc not only with the TV apparatus but also with contemporary circus. This form of comedy, often identified as "stream of consciousness", "surreal", "nonsensical," or "carnivalesque", challenges logical categories and received conceptions of the world. In the Pythons' comedy, nonsense becomes a higher form of sense manifest through the language of the body, inversion of linguistic categories, and distortions in visual perception of places and events." - Marcia Landy, Monty Python's Flying Circus (TV Milestones), 2005 [source].
Robert Hewison himself would even eventually publish a book on Monty Python in 1981, concerning the censorship and hostility the troupe's comedic ventures faced [source].
* * *
The 1961-1966 period of Oxford student comedy is difficult to discuss with approachable concision while also affording its many players fair attention for their respective contributions. From the exaggerated rivalry between Braham Murray and Michael Rudman, to the national success of Hang Down Your Head and Die, to the culturally interesting failures of You Can't Do Much Without A Screwdriver and Four Degrees Over, to the ground-breaking 1964 Oxford Revue and its historic consequences - all demanded an array of young talent which have since only progressed to new heights within the performing arts or otherwise. Some occupations were predictable extrapolations from university life, as was the case with Murray and Rudman.
Others, like Bob Scott, pursued quite different professional paths.
Annabel Leventon, the 'queen of O.U.D.S.', has had a particularly notable career, attending to the musicianship honed in the Four Beats and, in doing so, winning a prominent court case for the rights to her extraordinary life story. Even in the aftermath, her skills as a stage performer - sharpened, at least in part, by her appearence in the Oxford Revue - proved invaluable.
And yet to this day, this very cohort of Oxford performers - who oversaw three generations of revue rise and fall amid a culturally tumultuous decade - still meet to remember and celebrate the achievements of days gone by, and commemorate those who were lost along the way.
"Terry was warm, generous and sociable. Always interested in meeting new people and sharing his enthusiasm with them. I’ve made many good friends through Terry and their messages and memories... all conjure up a vision of a good man. And that’s really it. Terry was a good man." - Michael Palin, 2020 [source].
Pictured - the cover image for 'Seven-A-Side', a compilation recording of E.T.C. and O.T.G compositions from across 1964, including those from Hang Down Your Head and Die and The Oxford Revue. The performers depicted in this mock 'post-rugby-match photograph' were all important presences within Oxford student comedy theatre - it is a source of regret that some had little to no mention within this exhibit for the sake of streamlining historical narratives. Back row, left to right - Nigel Rees, Susan Solomon, Bob Scott, Adele Weston, Dick Durden-Smith, Jane Somerville and John Gould. Front row, left to right - Michael Palin, Mick Sadler and David Wood.
"That's it, then. Kick off for 45 minutes playing time, and damned is he who first cries 'Hold, here comes the man with the lemons'." - Seven-A-Side record cover, 1965 [source].