By Jeeves
Opening Night: October 28, 2001
Closing: December 30, 2001
Theater: Helen Hayes Theatre
When Bertie Wooster’s banjo mysteriously disappears just as he is about to give a concert in a church hall, his quick-witted and unflappable manservant Jeeves suggests that he entertain his audience by relating the hapless romantic misadventures of his circle of high-society London cronies. This new production features a fantastic tap-dancing cast and 13 delightful songs composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber with lyrics by Alan Ayckbourn, and is as refreshingly English as a gin and tonic!
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October 29, 2001
The giggles and snorts induced by P. G. Wodehouse, the master of dry spoofery, have everything to do with the language of propriety applied to the presumption of privilege.
Wodehouse’s best-known works are, of course, the tales of a harmless and helpless wealthy idler, Bertie Wooster, and his brilliant manipulator of a valet, Jeeves. It is Bertie who narrates in a voice that is delicious with honest self-appraisal and cluelessness and implicitly conveys the author’s bland nonsurprise at the foolishness of the feckless rich. The Jeeves stories are piffle of great sophistication: in their recounting of ill-advised infatuations and foolish wagers, it isn’t the plot or even the characters that make you laugh so much, but the narrative tone.
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