Review: Matthew Macfadyen and Stephen Mangan are Jeeves and Wooster
10/11/2013
Every now and again comes along a comedy that is perfect silliness and Jeeves and Wooster: Perfect Nonsense at the Duke of York's is one.
The humour is farce gleaned from two narrative threads. Wooster - PG Wodehouse's hapless toff - has just got into a bit of a scrape involving a silver cow-creamer, miss-directed affections and an extremely tall German gentleman. One of his club drinking pals, in hearing of the tale, suggests it is the stuff of a stage play and so Wooster decides to give it a go.
Assisted by his capable butler Jeeves (Matthew Macfadyen) and his Aunt's butler Seppings (Mark Hadfield), who between them play all the other male and female characters, you are set upon a journey where the finer plot details - there is a lot of blackmail - is of lesser importance than the fun and japes.
All three cast members do a sterling job particularly Matthew Macfadyen and Mark Hadfield who often steal their scenes (only Macfadyen can make a pompous old man complete with fake moustache/pipe combo strangely attractive or maybe that was just me). How the three make it through the show and in particular the rather marvellous curtain call finale without corpsing is testament to their skill; they certainly look like they are having heaps of fun.
Jeeves and Wooster is a piece of very well done silliness and I may be queueing for day seats over the festive season. It runs at the Duke of Yorks Theatre until March 8.
RS/BW 6DS
Now I can't do this one without name dropping but after the performance, thanks to Gabriela we met and briefly talked to Stephen Mangan who is friends with David Tennant (trust me) and as mentioned recently in a Guardian live chat Mr T knows Mr W.