The Theater: Birthday

The Broadway show with the longest run has the smallest cast. The cast of Comedy in Music consists of Danish-born Pianist-Funnyman Victor Borge. Last week Borge began his third year on Broadway, having long since broken all records for a one-man show in New York.* To celebrate his 731st performance, he threw a champagne party for the entire audience. At the intermission 120 magnums of French champagne and 50 trays of canapés appeared, along with 24 waiters from the Waldorf. With a bittersweet smile, Borge said, “This is the happiest and costliest evening of my life.”

He could well afford it. Borge produced the show himself and got back his $3,200 investment after two performances. Since then, about 750,000 customers have spent almost $2,000,000 to see his show.

Few have been disappointed. He is casually spontaneous, whether throwing away an outrageous pun (“I will now play you excerpts. My mother made wonderful excerpts. Fried excerpts, boiled excerpts . . .”) or sneering at Franz Liszt’s Liebestraum as he skilfully plays it. He seems to ad lib every other line (but does not), appears to enjoy his own performance enormously (and does). One customer, who apparently has almost as good a time with Borge’s performance as Borge, has been to see him 54 times. Another man laughed so hard he had a heart attack, was forbidden by his wife after his recovery to look at Borge on TV.

Although Borge works in two sets consisting simply of drapes, union rules demand that he be assisted by eleven stage hands and four stand-by musicians. What do the stage hands do? “That,” says Borge, “is a question I can’t answer.” But at the 731st performance, the musicians finally got their chance. As the audience quaffed champagne, Borge had the pianist, two violinists and a trombonist join the celebration by playing Happy Birthday.

*Previous record holder: Monologuist Cornelia Otis Skinner with 69 performances in 1952.