What: Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense dir. Sean Foley (Duke of York’s Theatre, London; 10th Oct 2013 – 20th Sept 2014)
Why: A free ticket – many thanks to
Official Theatre!
Never in my life have I been able to turn down something
free. So when Official Theatre got in touch with a comp, I snatched
it up like P.G. Wodehouse snatching up a comically toffy name.
Perfect Nonsense
is an apt name for the play, if we’re taking ‘perfect’ to mean, archaically, ‘completely
formed, finished, or made; completely prepared and made ready’.[1]
Trussed up and finished off like Bertie Wooster in a buttoned waistcoat, this
bouncy, amiable pseudo-romp is well directed, well rehearsed, and well, a
little too ‘prepared’. Like Bertie,
it’s a bit forced.
The premise is that Bertie Wooster, affable chap and
all-round nice fellow, wants to put on a performance of an eventful day in
which his Aunt Dahlia forcibly enlisted his help in the retrieval of a silver
cow creamer, fearfully fallen into the possession of the inimitable Sir Watykn
Basset. The play abounds with meta-theatrical and playful nods to its own
artificiality, the limitations of doubling providing a lot of the laughs,
Bertie’s goofy satisfaction at his own narrative charming. Self-consciously a
dramatic farce, it is undeniably fun. It is not, however, as the OED might argue, perfect in the sense of
being ‘in a state of complete excellence; free from any imperfection or defect
of quality’.[2]
It lacks a certain pizzazz, a certain West End kapow. Perhaps this was due to
the mid-week slump, where several seats remained unfilled, punters soaking up
cider in pubs and parks.
Or perhaps this is down to its small cast. A three-hander of
middle-age and upward males –accomplished in their mimicking abilities,
admirable for their stamina, generally comfortable in their roles – is not
always going to be a recipe for fireworks (and quite right too – we can’t have
another roof falling down now, can we?). Their onstage chemistry, camaraderie
and mutual respect is clear, and the venue is a suitably intimate one, but,
regardless, the space never felt fully utilised, fully filled. I fear when the
play goes on tour at the end of September it may struggle in some of the larger
venues on its route.
 |
| And that's showbiz, kid. (Photo from www.jeevesandwoosterplay.com) |
The play begins with Bertie addressing his audience,
explaining how he will be treading the boards with the help of his faithful
valet Jeeves and his Aunt Dahlia’s well-worn butler Seppings filling all other
parts. Played too much on one level, this opening interaction didn’t grab me,
up in the Royal Circle – it was a little too wide-eyed and caricatured to draw
that much interest; perhaps closer to the stage it would have been magical, and
perhaps for a tourist it would have been charmingly British. But this opening
interaction left me a little suspicious of whether the next two and a half
hours were going to drive me a little mad.
As it turns out, they didn’t at all. I need to remember
(perhaps write on a Post-it and stick to my notebook) that I never, ever enjoy
the first ten to fifteen minutes of a show, even one I end up raving about later.
I need my settling time. I’m probably thinking about how hungry I am (probably
fairly), how full I am (quite likely also fairly), how close I am to needing a
toilet break (generally about half a cup of tea away), to properly relax into
enjoying something. A little restless, and a bit of a fidget, those teething
moments are always hard. As my mind wandered in this direction, I resolved to
settle back and enjoy from that moment onwards.
And the truth is, James Lance’s Bertie Wooster really is
hugely likeable. Completely two-dimensional, but justifiably so, as this is a
completely two-dimensional piece, entertainment at its purest, not purporting
to be anything else. His exaggerated facial expressions are a masterclass in
Panto 101, and his genuine glee at almost everything is infectious. He’s a
puppy you really want to have around for Christmas, but maybe by Boxing Day he’ll
find himself at Battersea with a bow around his neck. He does, rather oddly but
wonderfully, an excellent impression of a newt, akin to a lizard impersonation
an ex-boyfriend would occasionally pull out (this is, sadly, not a euphemism). I
spent most of the play thinking he had played spotty Scottish teen Gregory in
the 80s classic Gregory’s Girl, and
could just not see the resemblance. This is because, it turns out, I had
misread Wikipedia, and it was in fact his co-star, John Gordon Sinclair, who
had debuted as the eponymous Hibernian adolescent (the name should have given
it away really. Yeesh, why didn’t his parents just name him Scotty
McHaggis-DeepFriedMarsBar)[3].
Sinclair’s Jeeves was a little disappointing. He has the
potential to be a real foil to the flighty Bertie, but he seemed a little
wearied, opaque without being interestingly opaque. As the play hinges on his
mysteriously-gained information on Bertie’s nemesis, Jeeves’ pivotal role was a
little wooden. Sinclair didn’t seem entirely comfortable with his top billing,
and seemed to become more flustered as Jeeves as the play went on. I wonder if
this is because he has clearly put a lot himself into his other characters: the
spot-on pipe-smoking, insult-barking Sir Watkyn, his flouncy and highly-sexed daughter,
Madeleine Basset (whose snake-like tongue set me quite a-fluster), her
bumbling, pig-faced fiancé, newt-obsessed, Gussy Fink-Nottle, and the manipulative
and seductive Stiffy Byng. His absolute star turn, however, is in one of the
play’s concluding scenes, where he simultaneously takes the parts of Sir Watkyn
and his niece Stiffy. A consummate feat of costume design (his left side dolled
up in Stiffy’s garish pinky purple shiny skirt suit, his right side clad in Sir
Watkyn’s perfect green army-major-on-golfing-holiday suit), his quick changes,
comic timing and great sense of stage irony well deserved the round of applause
that followed him off.
The star of the show, however, was co-creator Robert
Goodale. An adorable aging cart horse of a Seppings, my heart leapt out for this
overburdened and humble old man. Goodale’s lightly Scottish butler Butterfields
had a deliciously wrinkly nose and, despite the many, many times the joke was
used, his increasing perplexity and mild aggressiveness in his ‘Thank You’
battle with Bertie had me in stitches every time. His Inspector Oats, a Cockney
policeman who Bertie describes as a bit ‘ooh ar ooh ar’,[4] is
an amusing interlude of disgruntled fattery. His Hitler-haired fascist Roderick
Spode was actually a little intimidating, a Rottweiler in a Doberman suit – as Bertie’s
description lists Spode as six, eight, maybe nine feet tall, the diminutive
Goodale steps up onto footstalls and staging until eventually investing in a
ginormous suit on wheels. The disparity between his gnashy little nasty face,
his repeated threats to smoosh Bertie into ‘jellaaaaaaay, Wooster, jellaaaaaaay’,
and his limp lolloping limbs is a great piece of physical comedy. His pièce de resistance, however, is as the
wonderfully orange-clad Aunt Dahlia, perhaps the wrtiers’ homage to the ‘coven
of aunts’ with
whom Wodehouse himself spent an unhappily large part of his childhood. As
flamboyant as her flowery namesake, a few petals away from being a full on Dame
Edna, Aunt Dahlia is, to the play and Goodale’s credit, no pantomime dame, no
token drag act, but a hilariously crafted and fully fleshed battle-axe who
lights up the room. Goodale’s own double scene, in which Aunt Dahlia fights
Roderick Spode, is a superbly executed tussle, the best use of stage space in
the production, and a testament to the variety of vocal talents that Jeeves
recommendeds Seppings for at the beginning of the play.
The set is clever: a revolving stage and multi-purpose
scenery meant that the play was as smooth as one of Bertie’s martinis. Set pieces
are fantastically executed: the slow-mo falling of the prized silver cow creamer;
Bertie’s bubbly bath-time, complete with rubber duck; Sepping’s level crossing.
A nice touch is the use of sandbags and the electricity-producing bike
(powering the revolving stage) that add an old-school theatre feel to the
staging. Even the curtain, a bold red with gold fringe, was, apparently, a
design element. I know this, because a
man in front of us refused to put his phone away before curtain up, determined
to have a photo of the stage to Whatsapp to some poor friend or lover. As a
steward, and then his manager, told the fine fellow that he was infringing the
show’s copyright by replicating the curtain, he repeatedly said ‘But the stage
is EMPTY’ in an increasingly irritating and aggressive tone until he was told
if he carried on being difficult he’d be asked to leave. A little advice, mate:
save your breath, and the embarrassment of your elderly companions, and just
Google it. Look, here it is:
 |
| The offending drape |
The show ends with a hilarious and toe-tapping take on the
Charleston, an unexpected jig of a treat which left me beaming. Perfect Nonsense really does exactly
what it says on the tin. It is, as the OED would say, a piece ‘of which every
part is enjoyable’.[5]
Not only that, but it leaves you realizing your innate human desire to possess
a cow creamer, so you too can enjoy milk streaming from the open mouth of a
precious metal bovine.
[1]
Perfect, adj 3a. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/140704?rskey=a1MwsU&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid.
Because why not start your blog post with a few sprinklings of the OED, eh?
[2]
Perfect, adj 1b, ibid. There I go
again!
[3]
Sorry, Scotland – please feel free to leave the UK.
[4]
I was the only person I heard laugh at this in the audience.
#selfidentification
[5]
Perfect adj 1c http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/140704?rskey=a1MwsU&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid.
Somebody stop me!
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