Product Description
Victor Borge was a master at combining two seemingly disparate elements: comedy and classical music. While the Dane's dapper dignity fit the image of "longhair" music, Borge undercut it with broad physical comedy, clever spoofs, and off-the-cuff wit. A pioneer in the field of live comedy recordings, Borge is nevertheless best appreciated on video, and The Best of Victor Borge Acts One and Two captures a 90-minute concert that includes many of his most famous routines. He chides late-arriving members of the Minneapolis audience ("I come from Copenhagen and was here before you!"), falls off the piano bench, and reads his sheet music upside down. There are a few unwitting guests: a stagehand drafted to turn Borge's pages, soprano Marylyn Mulvey who tries to sing a Verdi aria through Borge's teasing and scolding, and Sahan Arzruni as he and Borge play a two-piano Hungarian rhapsody on a single piano by climbing over and around each other. Borge also presents an opera "written by Mozart but credited to Salieri" ("so you can imagine what kind of opera it is") and proves that he's not merely a clown by skillfully performing a set of waltzes and lullabies. In addition, two of his best-loved sketches are nonmusical: Inflationary Language, in which numbers in language, like the economy, are increased ("I'll go back to Elevenessee.... Three-dleoo."), and Phonetic Punctuation, in which a period is read aloud to sound like fft and an exclamation point fsss fft. Like Anna Russell and PDQ Bach, Victor Borge helped make classical music accessible to a wide audience by showing that it could be laugh-out-loud funny. --David Horiuchi
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Great routines, but truncated recording disappointing
Victor Borge is as funny as ever in this 90-minute live performance. He is thoroughly engaged, very lively, and manages to deliver even his most common routines with such energy and humor that you feel as if you're seeing them for the first time.
That said, the recording has some flaws. The first you will notice is that the video quality, though not distracting, is nevertheless poor. It's painfully obvious that this DVD was mde from a VHS cassette. The one that most disappointed me most, though, is that "The Best of Victor Borge Acts I and II" is just that--the best of them, not the whole thing. Seven years ago, I purchased a videocassette of this same concert. Since the tape has gotten worn to the point of being unusable, I purchased this DVD expecting to have all of Acts I and II. Sadly, several routines are fully removed, including Borge's birthday sketches and his performance of the Moonlight Sonata. His performance of "Clear the Saloon" and several other pieces have also been cut from the recording. For this reason, although I don't outright regret the purchase, I'm profoundly disappointed with it.
A musical upstart - Excellent
Comedy with a difference. What!? No swearing????
Todays comedian often resort to expletives to get their humour across. Victor is old school, very talented musically and is funny to all ages. For the young a very funny introduction to the classics.