“Danny Kaye Hands Out Merriment, Joy”
The Age – July 21, 1959
By: Colin Bennett

ENTERTAINMENT:             Danny Kaye

THEATRE:                             Princess

           The art of Danny conquered Melbourne last night. He rendered his first audience helpless by sharing with it his unique blend of merriment, insanity and joy.
            Is any one man worth £2 11/6 for a front seat or £1 1/6 for a back? If any one man is worth it, here, for certain, he is.
            On a stage, the full measure of Danny Kaye’s gifts becomes apparent to Melbourne for the first time.
            The Walter Mitty, the light-hearted loon, the tongue-twister of gibberish, the singer of sentiment—all these characters have been within his film range.
            The dazzling footlights entertainer who communes with an audience has not, and it is beautiful to see him in action.
            Last night, over 100 minutes, he ran the whole gamut of his art. Not one Kaye legend, but any number came to life.
            There were no stolen laughs, nothing blue, no aggressive display. Just a variety of wholesome styles, woven into a cunning stage pattern.
            A cracker-pace juggler, a tap-dance trio and the most superb ventriloquist (Senor Vences, who conjures his doll out of his hand) set the evening in motion. Then came Kaye.
            He gibbered, jibed, whimpered, crooned, wheedled, whispered, cajoled and burlesqued. He sympathized with the audience, danced for them, made them sing and shout, and rant at them.
            In each case, his escapade into another branch of humor led to helpless laughter.
            Kaye the satirist may be a frightfully-frightful Englishman, a pixie, a conductor, an off-key tenor, a spitting Teuton, a murderer of lieder or a Flemenco dancer who stamps his feet until they hurt.
            The nonsense of Kaye is a small boy trying unsuccessfully to say the word “rhinoceros,” or a European tangling his tongue around a dozen languages, all of which almost—but not quite—exist.
            He has an extraordinary ear for accent a delightful sense of the surrealist.

Song, Sound

           Suddenly come the simpler forms of Kaye—the straight singer (with a couple of duck quacks thrown in) of Hans Christian Andersen songs [the duck quacks refer to “The Ugly Duckling” – J.N. webmistress]; or the confidential fellow who with easy elegance strolls to the footlights, sits on them and spins anecdotes of his daughter back home.
            He skits the other acts in the show unmercifully. He sings every type of song. He emits every type of known sound and laughter, and gets you to do the same.
            When you don’t snap your fingers to his satisfaction, he turns the auditorium lights up and stares out at the audience.
            “So this is what I’ve been dealing with all evening,” he says smugly; warns the man in the eighth row to snap more loudly and bursts into a madly clever song about psychiatry.
            Danny Kaye relaxes you by relaxing, or appearing to relax, himself. For the most studied thing about his behavior on a stage is its apparent artlessness.
            The vitality and versatility seem spontaneous and inexhaustible, yet are in fact controlled by a highly disciplined, exact technique. The insanity is carefully worked.
            First he checks his audience’s pulse, then assumes complete control. So when he leads them in community singing, he can make them obey his whims by chanting or shouting “Zoom” or “Haha” to suit him.
            As he does this, he laughs at them, and the audience loves even this.
            They never want to go home because Danny Kaye seems to want to stay all night, too.
            Forty-six but ageless, his art makes a rare evening of delight. We will not see his like again in ages.

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