Peter Edward Cook was an English comedian, actor, satirist, playwright and screenwriter. He was the leading figure of the British satire boom of the 1960s, and he was associated with the anti-establishment comedic movement that emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1950s.
Kenneth Charles Williams was a British actor and comedian. He was best known for his comedy roles and in later life as a raconteur and diarist. He was one of the main ensemble in 26 of the 31 Carry On films, and appeared in many British television programmes and radio comedies, including series with Tony Hancock and Kenneth Horne, as well as being a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4's comedy panel show Just a Minute from its second series in 1968 until his death 20 years later.
Beyond the Fringe was a British comedy stage revue written and performed by Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore. It debuted at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival and went on to play in London's West End and then in America, both on tour and on New York's Broadway in the early 1960s. Hugely successful, it is widely regarded as seminal to the "satire boom", the rise of satirical comedy in 1960s Britain.
Eric Idle is an English actor, comedian, songwriter, musician, screenwriter and playwright. He was a member of the British comedy group Monty Python and the parody rock band the Rutles. Idle studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and joined Cambridge University Footlights.
Alexander Galbraith "Sandy" Wilson was an English composer and lyricist, best known for his musical The Boy Friend (1953).
The Duchess Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster, London, located in Catherine Street near Aldwych.
Mixed Doubles: An Entertainment on Marriage is a programme consisting of a series of eight short plays or revue sketches, each with two characters, composed by various English playwrights. It was first performed on 6 February 1969 in the Hampstead Theatre Club with the title, We Who Are About To.... The programme was then presented as Mixed Doubles: An Entertainment on Marriage at the Comedy Theatre, London, on 9 April 1969.
Norman Frederick Simpson was an English playwright closely associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. To his friends he was known as Wally Simpson, in comic reference to the abdication crisis of 1936.
Applicant is a dramatic sketch written by Harold Pinter. Originally written in 1959 and first published by Eyre Methuen in 1961, it was first broadcast on BBC Radio on the Third Programme "between February and March 1964," along with Pinter's other revue sketches, That's Your Trouble, That's All, Interview, and Dialogue for Three.
The Hothouse (1958/1980) is a full-length tragicomedy written by Harold Pinter in the winter of 1958 between The Birthday Party (1957) and The Caretaker (1959). After writing The Hothouse in the winter of 1958 and following the initial commercial failure of The Birthday Party, Pinter put the play aside; in 1979 he re-read it and directed its first production, at Hampstead Theatre, where it opened on 24 April 1980, transferring to the Ambassadors Theatre on 25 June 1980, and it was first published, also in 1980, by Eyre Methuen. The play received its American premiere at the Trinity Repertory Company in 1982. Pinter himself played Roote in a subsequent production staged at the Minerva Theatre, in Chichester, in 1995, later transferring to the Comedy Theatre, in London.
Night is a dramatic sketch by the English playwright Harold Pinter, presented as one of eight short dramatic works about marriage in the program Mixed Doubles: An Entertainment on Marriage at the Comedy Theatre, London, on 9 April 1969; directed by Alexander Doré, this production included Nigel Stock as the Man and Pinter's first wife, Vivien Merchant, as the Woman (54). It replaced another sketch performed previously in the program We Who Are About To... at the Hampstead Theatre Club on 6 February 1969; each of the original eight sketches about marriage also featured two characters.
David Campton was a prolific British dramatist who wrote plays for the stage, radio, and cinema for thirty-five years.
The Phillip Street Theatre was a popular and influential Australian theatre and theatrical company, located in Phillip Street in Sydney that was active from 1954 and 1971 that became well known for its intimate satirical revue productions.
Sondheim on Sondheim is a musical revue consisting of music and lyrics written by Stephen Sondheim for his many shows. It is conceived and directed by James Lapine. The revue had a limited run on Broadway in 2010.
The Harold Pinter Theatre, known as the Comedy Theatre until 2011, is a West End theatre, and opened on Panton Street in the City of Westminster, on 15 October 1881, as the Royal Comedy Theatre. It was designed by Thomas Verity and built in just six months in painted (stucco) stone and brick. By 1884 it was known as simply the Comedy Theatre. In the mid-1950s the theatre underwent major reconstruction and re-opened in December 1955; the auditorium remains essentially that of 1881, with three tiers of horseshoe-shaped balconies.
Charles Zwar was an Australian songwriter, composer, lyricist, pianist and music director who was largely associated with the British revue and musical comedy industries between the late-1930s and 1960s.
One Over the Eight was a comedy revue which opened on April 5, 1961. It was written by Peter Cook and starred Kenneth Williams.
Trouble in the Works (1959) is a comedy sketch by Harold Pinter. The sketch has two characters, Mr. Fibbs and Wills. The play takes place in an office, where Wills has been called into Mr. Fibbs' office to tell him why the workers are unhappy. According to Mr. Fibbs, his workers are treated very well and he can't seem to understand why his workers are so unhappy. Wills explains to him that though the workers are treated well, they have turned against the products that they make. The majority of the rest of the show is the two going back and forth on which products the workers no longer like. At the end, Mr. Fibbs asks what the workers would rather make, and Wills answers, "Brandy balls".
Lance Mulcahy was an Australian-born composer of musicals and revue.
