RIGHT HO, JEEVES
Wodehouse’s reputation, for better and for worse (his fans included Evelyn Waugh and Hilaire Belloc, who called him “the best writer of our time,” while Sean O’Casey dismissed him as “literature’s performing flea”), stems from an uncanny ability to make the idiotic actions of a socially inbred caste of useless nincompoops entertaining. Where a writer like Waugh used such characters to satirize the decline of the British Empire, the benevolent Wodehouse had about as much capacity for mockery as Bertie, with his all-purpose put-down “Tinkerty-tonk.” Wodehouse simply found such people funny–the perfect population for a writing style he described as “a sort of musical comedy without music.” Reading him is like spending a couple of hours in meaningless, mind-clearing gossip–but articulate gossip, for his glibly chatty prose is bright, efficient, and amusing, with its jazzy juxtapositions of upper-class stuffiness and smart-alecky slang. (“The chap I know . . . has a face like a fish,” Bertie tells Jeeves in an attempt to confirm a friend’s surprise appearance in London. “Possibly there was a certain suggestion of the piscine, sir,” is the butler’s ever-proper response.)
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Mark Netherland’s discreetly deco set and Marguerite Picard’s costumes are evocative as well as economical; and for those so inclined, the show is augmented at weekend matinees by a “Charming Tea” complete with scones and cucumber sandwiches, served outside the theater by the Uncommon Ground espresso bar.
