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| A pig who takes things as they come |
The conceit of the play is that Bertie, having seen a couple of shows, decides that acting is easy and that he will therefore recount his latest adventures in this way, assisted only by Jeeves, his gentleman's gentleman, and Stebbings, his Aunt Dahlia's butler. The latter two are called upon to play a host of characters, wherein lies much of the humour. Because interestingly, while the dialogue of the play within the play is lifted directly from the source material (The Code of the Woosters to be precise) the laughs mainly come from the physical theatre.
The small, multi-tasking cast and the creative design of the staging immediately reminded me of the Peepolykus version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and, unusually for me, I was right because one third of the cast - playing Jeeves, Gussie Fink-Nottle, Sir Watkin Basset, his daughter Madeleine and his niece Stiffy Byng - was Jason Thorpe who starred in that production. Robert Webb had the somewhat easier role of Wooster. He was good, but perhaps his television experience was the cause of not speaking quite loud enough for the theatre.
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| The Cool Person |
The third member of the cast - playing Stebbings, Aunt Dahlia, Constable Oates and most memorably Sir Roderick Spode - illustrates once again that this blog is not just thrown together, but follows a carefully plotted narrative arc. Having been steered in the direction of Robert Morley by well-known Scottish mug designer MS Foy, we have travelled via that actor's portrayal of Hamilton Black to 'The Young Ones' film. We now arrive at Christopher Ryan, here giving us a would-be fascist dictator in black footer bags, but perhaps best known as Mike in 'The Young Ones' television programme. No applause is necessary.
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