Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Late Night Lehrer – with Caspar Phillipson
Caspar Phillipson
Genre: Cabaret, Music, Variety Show
Venue: Greenside at George Street
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
An hour enjoying the brilliant satire of Tom Lehrer through the lens of current events performed by the very talented and engaging Danish singer/pianist Caspar Phillipson
Review
The world recently lost the comic genius of Tom Lehrer. Thankfully, the immensely clever and talented Caspar Philipson has taken the mantle and breathed new life into the music of satire icon Tom Lehrer.
Sit back and enjoy an hour of laughs, insights, fabulous piano playing, biting humour, clever writing, soaring vocals, and all-around charm with Danish film and TV star Caspar Phillipson. It is both intellectual and just rousing fun.
It feels like we have been invited into a fancy parlour for an intimate evening with a superstar. Phillipson comes on the stage dressed in red velvet dinner jacket, formal white tux shirt, bow tie, and polka dot socks (a nice touch), sits at the piano. With a twinkle in his eye and a winning smile, he immediately owns the room. He casts a spell that last the full hour and takes the audience through the clever writing of Tom Lehrer.
Lehrer was an American singer-songwriter who came to the fore in the 1950s and 1960s, heard regularly on the TV show “That Was the Week That Was”. He broached current events and issues in a sardonic and biting style, with memorable melodies and clever piano scores. Phillipson has perfectly emulated the style, adding his own twists.
But performed by a Danish artist? Lehrer’s music was clearly aimed at American audiences, with tunes like National Brotherhood Week, which was written in response to a 1934 official declaration of National Brotherhood Week in the U.S. to foster tolerance, except that this song talks about everyone hating everyone else. However, Lehrer’s music was very popular in Denmark in the 1960s and 1970s, especially due to lack of censorship in Denmark like in the U.S. To Danish audiences he called himself “America’s revenge for Victor Borge”. Phillipson shows us how these songs are again appropriate in today’s political climate. And the themes are universal and transcend generations.
From Phillipson: “It has been quite a shock to discover just how much the songs of Tom Lehrer resonate again, in this time and day. I started rehearsing and performing one song at a time as a way of directing my artistic energies, at first during COVID and then pretty much since. And each song has emerged as a bitingly dark and often deliriously hilarious comment to issues we grapple with today – the conflict in Ukraine, a volatile US leadership, discussions of gender and skin colour, the age of retirement, a new Pope etc. People feared for the future when these songs were written during the Cold War – and people’s fears for the future are clear and present today.”
Each song is introduced with a short story from current day or from his own experiences. The show is loosely tied together with the narration but the segues work well. There is historical context in order to understand Lehrer’s writing but Phillipson relates everything to contemporary news. When introducing “I Got it from Agnes”, a merry little ditty about spreading disease, he talks about the beauty of shared experience – and then sharing COVID. People’s addiction to their phones and the news ends in “We Will All Go Together When We Go”, showing it really doesn’t matter what happened along the way as everyone ends up the same way. There is even an audience singalong of an old-time British music hall song. Given the state of affairs in Washington DC and Los Angeles, it was very appropriate to perform “Send the Marines”. For those who have experienced fiery love: “blacken my eye, set fire to my tie as we dance to the Masochism Tango” The pièce de resistance is Lehrer’s song “The Elements” where he names all of the elements in the periodic table, but sung to the patter song “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance”. It is a tongue twister performed at regular speed but Phillipson meets the challenge – and then reprises with an even faster rendition.
Phillipson keeps us laughing throughout. Even the piano glissandos are funny. Phillipson: “We need these songs more than ever – let laughter and musicality bring us together, there is hope.” Fringe audiences – and audiences worldwide – need an evening of pure entertainment from the very charming and talented Caspar Phillipson.
