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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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The one man (plus two) cast with, left, Ray Lawrence as Seppins, seated, Rod Bissett as Bertie Wooster and Gareth May as Jeeves Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense Grange Playhouse **** For the first time in the 16 years or so since the curtain first rose on Behind The Arras we actually left before the end of a performance . . . not that there was anything wrong with the production, indeed it was perfectly entertaining nonsense, as was promised, but with the car park resembling a trip through the wardrobe to Narnia, the old adage the show must go on had found its limitations. With snow falling relentlessly, the interval was curtailed in a bid to beat the weather but a major accident on the M6 and the Met Office promoting storm Goretti from an amber warning to red for the area and cars on Broadway North doing a creditable impression of Bambi on ice, stage manager Lucy Talbot stepped in to cancel the rest of the performance and send the audience on their way in the hope they could make it home safely in the worsening storm. The stage manager, incidentally, once a show starts, is in complete charge, making judgement calls and fully responsible for safety both on and off stage and after a tortuous journey home taking around six times longer than normal, past skidded, stuck and abandoned cars it was hard to argue with her pragmatic decision. Audience members were invited to contact the box office to arrange to change their tickets to another, hopefully, more clement evening. And a shout out to cast and crew who appeared in the car park to clear snow off cars and help customers leave safely. Above and beyond. Which brings us back to the Olivier award winning Perfect Nonsense by Robert and David Goodale based on P G Wodehouse's The Code of the Woosters, in which Bertie Wooster decides to stage his rambling tale of his weekend at Totleigh Towers as a one man show – after all, there is nothing to the acting business, he tells us, so it can't be all that difficult. Luckily it is an endeavour in which he can lean on the services of his butler, valet, manservant and indeed, brains, Jeeves. For those Jeeves and Wooster aficionados it should be remembered that in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, the ever-discreet Jeeves gave us his dreadfully polite assessment of his employer’s intellect as 'mentally negligible'. The one man show runs into difficulty from the orf, when Bertie realises that playing himself is fine but he might (will) struggle to play some 11 parts of both sexes and himself and so enlists Jeeves and Seppings. Seppings? Who he? you might wellask. He is butler to Bertie's Aunt Dahlia who in turn is . . . well Seppings with a higher voice in a coat and upper-class lady of leisure's hat. it is a lovely performance by Ray Lawrence who also pops up as a constable, an antique shop proprietor and the evil(ish) Roderick Spode whose height varies from scene to scene – don’t ask, just remember it is Bertie'e tale and he is mentally negligible.
Bertie and Jeeves in the Rolls MDF model racing to Totleigh Towers Bertie being played by Rod Bissett. It is a huge part played with a delightful vagueness by Bissett giving us a Wooster you suspect would never finish his one man (plus two) play without the assistance, as in stewardship, of Jeeves. Bissett's Bertie is happy to bumble his way through, even commenting upon and complimenting his butlering duo on their efforts in a play aided by some instant scenery knocked up in readiness by Jeeves, secure in the knowledge his mentally inadequate employer would be attempting a Thespian endeavour to relate his recent adventure. Gareth May gives us Jeeves, the ultimate gentleman's gentleman. Calm, composed, never rattled and saying more with a raised eyebrow than any argument could manage. He is fiendishly loyal, pernickety about the correct and well-presented gentleman's attire and his oh so polite responses are quite crushing put downs which nudge his charge in a more sensible, more Jeevesian direction. May also gives us the brusque magistrate Sir Watkyn Bassett, who once fined Bertie five smackeroons for stealing a policeman's helmet, with the main plank of Bertie's defence being it was on boat race night. Adding a handy lampshade to proceedings, May is transformed into Madeline Bassett, Sir Watkyn's romantically emotional daughter, her fiancée, Gussie Fink-Nottle, Bertie's friend who studies newts and keeps a colony in his bedroom, and Sir Watkyn's scheming niece Stiffy Byng with her dog accessory . . . don’t ask. Then there is the silver cow creamer, which is a sort of cream jug, or more jugette considering its size, which Aunt Dahlia's silver collecting husband wanted to buy, but it was snatched from under his nose by his silver collecting rival Sir Watkyn, so Aunt Dahlia has used blackmail to send young Bertie to Totleigh Towers to grab it back.
Bertie, avoiding marriage and contemplating cow creamer purloinment contemplates dressing for dinner. Amid all this silver heist stuff we have Gussie's on off engagement, which when it is off puts Bertie in the frame to marry Madeline, as she, mistakenly, believes he wants to marry her which is a situation which he wishes to avoid at all costs. Oh, and did we mention a notebook? Madeline had been collecting insults about Sir Watkyn and Spode, real humdingers, and the notebook had gone missing. In the wrong hands it would be dynamite. Did it all work out? Well, spoiler alert, as Jeeves and Wooster manage another five novels over the next 33 years after The Code of the Woosters, and as Wooster never marries, we can probably take it that Jeeves, once again saves his master's bacon in what is an entertaining romp enjoyed by an understandably sparse and remarkably hardy audience. Rod Bissett and wife Sara, the director, produced a set with a simplicity to fit in with Bertie's one man three hander with an ingenious folding car while Stan Vigurs gave us a quite complex lighting plot which needed split second timing and added its own mark on proceedings. With Goretti hopefully blowing itself out and chilly normality returning, Perfect Nonsense is an entertaining romp to brighten any gloomy winter evening. Directed with a confident light touch by Sara Bissett, this perfect bit of nonsense or more precisely Bertie Wooster,will bumbling its way through the melting snow to 17-01-26. Roger Clarke 8-01-26 Grange Players |
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