This award-winning
revue was Hugh's first claim to performing fame.
Written
principally by Hugh and Stephen Fry, it was performed in Cambridge for
May Week 1981, toured the country, and ended in Edinburgh, where it won
the first-ever Perrier Award for comedy at the Fringe. The Times
Literary Supplement described it as follows:
"The Cambridge revue, The Cellar Tapes, is just
about
the most entertaining, the most delightful, the most thoroughly
good-time
show that I have seen for years...their satire has enormously improved.
In The Cellar Tapes there is a scorching song about
Americans who contribute
to causes which eventually result in the deaths of British soldiers in
Northern Ireland. This is satire in the grand class, for its lethal
blows
are delivered with the courtesy of one presenting a bouquet. The
singer,
Hugh Laurie, strums a guitar and entirely incorporates himself into the
persona of a genial, woolly-minded, generous American gift-giver, and
without
a word of reproach, with indeed every sign of friendliness and charm,
destroys
the man before our eyes. It is a superb execution."
The Cellar Tapes had a short run in the West End in September 1981, then was taken on tour to Australia. Of the London performances, Ned Chaillet in the London Times said:
"After years of relative creative calm the revuemongers at Cambridge Footlights have returned to the front of the queue of aspiring comic talents. Where Jonathan Miller, Michael Frayn and John Cleese are part of the company's notable past, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson are inescapable names in the present group. There is every chance that they are a notable past in the making....their programme is original and inventive and well-performed."
A modified version, titled Beyond
the Footlights, returned to London in spring 1982, and a
television version was also broadcast in May of that year. Their
success with
this revue led to Fry, Laurie and Thompson being selected (along with
Ben Elton and Robbie Coltrane)
to write and star in a sketch comedy series for Granada TV. The series,
Alfresco,
appeared in summer 1982, and, though it reputedly got off to a shaky
start, a second series was commissioned for the following year.
The BBC Comedy Guide has a
short article about the televised version of The Cellar Tapes. You can download
a cast photo as wallpaper.
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