Tom Lehrer has been described as "the greatest political musician that ever wasn’t". His seemingly strong views on subjects from war to pigeons were banned from radio airplay in his time due to their "offensive" content. Lehrer himself finds this incredibly amusing and sums up his view on being a "movement musician" in an interview he gave in 1995.

"Tom Lehrer has had a profound impact on the world of satire… He showed the world that it could look at itself and laugh, he was never afraid to satirise an issue but it was always in fun, never in anger… the only thing that he came out in favour of was "smut" or pornography."

The staging of Lehrer’s performances of his work is something that is rather unclear at times. There is precious little video footage of his original shows due to the nature of technology at that time, however from written accounts and recent interviews and performances on such shows as "Parkinson" (to promote the Cameron Macintosh’s Review of his work " Tomfoolery"), we can determine that staging was fairly minimal this is something that I would not change.

Lehrer would perform from the stool at his grand piano and all focus would remain on him throughout the show. He gave the speech between his songs in a very "straight" manner, and if you take away the humour he could quite easily be giving a maths lecture. By doing this he heightened the comic value of what he said. It was hard to take any of his words as serious or "world changing" because he is so calm and collected as he utters lines such as,

"Another familiar type of love song is the passionate or fiery variety… This particular

My ideas for set are in keeping with Lehrer’s approach to his writing. He does no clutter the text with unnecessary stage directions or movement therefore allowing the humour to flow more easily.

The piano is a main area of focus and I would place it on a fairly small stage to keep that attention focused. A spotlight would pick it out along with the stool for the performer. Much of the expression of the idea of parody is down to the performer. With the performance of the piece of music taking on the feel of whichever style Lehrer was "steali... Adapt" ing.

This parody is often where the fun is found in Lehrer’s work. Setting the folk song "clementine" into 4 different composers styles is a prime example, Cole Porter, a Jazz musician, Gilbert O’Sullivan And " Mozart, or… one of that crowd.". A rapport with the audience is essential in this piece as it is with all stand-up. The audience need to feel as if the performer is talking to them personally. This came from Lehrer’s teaching experience but any potential performer of his work must gain this early in the piece or he/she will have real problems keeping the audiences attention. I would stipulate that any performer considered for the piece would need a laid back, confident manner with a possible background in stand up comedy or presentation.

Lehrer’s voice throughout all of his performances is very correct and confident. This makes many of his comments purely amusing where other meanings could be read in. Therefore I feel it would be advisable to retain this element of the original performances if the correct ideals are to shine through. A change in the performer’s emphasis could make the piece turn into the type of social commentary Lehrer insists he was never heading towards.

In all elements of the performance it seems that understatement is the key. An audience should be allowed to see the humour without it being thrust into their faces. For instance in the notes to one of his seemingly most political songs, "I wanna go back to Dixie",

" I wanna talk with southern genn’lmen and put that white sheet on again.

I ain’t seen one good lynching is years! "

Lehrer simply describes it as,

" a typical Dixie song, all about the many delightful features of the south. "

This complete lack of consideration of the political consequences of the text needs to be shown through in that the performance should never refer to them in any way. One early idea I had was to include slides of certain images during the songs. For instance, showing soldiers in the trenches during " It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier ". However I feel that this would make the audience too involved with the actual subject matter as opposed to the general merriment that the song should represent.

Also, in order to gain the feel of the pieces which most people expect when they hear Tom Lehrer’s work, whether his performances or those contained in Tomfoolery, the emphasis needs to been seen to be on the music. It is the jolly nature of the music which I feel helped Lehrer to destroy the misconception that he was a " biting satirist ", his complete indifference to the highly controversial lyrics he sang also helped this. Lehrer’s view on changing the world can probably be summed up by comparing a quote from "AEWW Tom Lehrer" with quotes from two other figures well known for their social commentary.

"To do is to be"

Socrates

"To be is to do"
Aristotle

"Do, Be Do, Be Do…"

Tom Lehrer

Another method I would use concerns the layout of the audience. I would have them seated in a traditional comedy club style, around tables lit slightly by candles. This, I feel, creates a relaxed feel to the whole performance and people are expecting pure entertainment instead of a pessimistic, defeatist night. This certainly would not be Lehrer. In fact the show turns pessimism on it’s head at many points, including the "SURvivalist" hymn, "We will all go together when we go"

" I’d like to take you now, on wings of song as it were. And help you forget for a moment, perhaps, you’re drab, retched lives. "

Tom Lehrer

In the end this is what a performance of "An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer" is trying to accomplish as it is with all of Lehrer’s work. Joe Pasquale sums up the whole ideology that Lehrer represents, in his show "Twin Squeaks",

" It may be cack, but if you can’t go out and have an hour of cack every so often, what have you got left?"

Joe Pasquale

"An Evening Wasted…" still brings a smile to my face nearly half a century since it was first written and any performer staging it has the sole aim of upholding Lehrer’s vision through whatever means necessary and indeed he is an inspiration to any performer today who feels that even low art is become a little inverted. "Cack" is the way to the future.

I’ll leave you with a few words from the man himself…