Jessica Duchen

Why don’t classical music and comedy mix more often?

Sometimes I wonder if we classical music aficionados are masochists. We flock to the gloomiest song cycles by Schubert or Mahler expecting, indeed intending, to blub. We put ourselves through the atmospheric horrors of Soviet Russia by attending gigantic Shostakovich symphonies. And don’t get me started on Wagner.

So it was a relief the other night to shed tears of laughter for once — and muscle-wrenching, back-dislocating laughter, it was — all in the name of comedy in music.

Rainer Hersch’s one-man show at the bijou Jermyn Street Theatre pays tribute to Victor Borge, the man who proved classical music could be a subject for comedy. Hersch tells the story of the ‘clown prince of Denmark’ and does some of his best gags, along with a good few of his own.

Borge was born Børge Rosenbaum in Copenhagen in 1909. After early struggles, culminating in a dramatic escape from the Nazi invasion of Denmark — he and his wife were aboard the last boat to America out of Scandinavia — he made a dramatic radio debut and went on to tour the US as a comedian.

Eventually, despairing over New York, he hired a theatre on Broadway himself.

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