Review: JEEVES AND WOOSTER IN PERFECT NONSENSE at Schoolhouse Theater

When I approached actor Will DeVary after a rollicking performance by him and his two castmates – Jason Guy and Mark Edward Lang – of Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense at The Schoolhouse Theater and Arts Center in Croton Falls (N.Y.), I blurted out, “Well, I can honestly say that I’ve never seen anything quite like that before.” I neglected to ask the young thespian – who quickly is making an indelible impression with his forceful command of the stage – if he would say the same. 

This precious and precocious theatrical – to call up a nostalgic show business term with a British accent – is hard to describe and easy to laugh at, as it steadily gains steam, like a gathering storm, in a slyly measured headlong thrust that bespeaks the knowing, top-shelf, main stem stagecraft for which director Owen Thompson is known, and constantly delivers. 

Hapless British aristocrat Bertie Wooster and his immaculately-in-control manservant Jeeves are the creations of one P.G. Wodehouse, a near-mythical, early 20th Century British humorist of absurdly abundant comic gifts that brashly parade for all to marvel at, whether on the page or on the stage. Mr. Wodehouse is what’s known in modern coinage as “one of one,” which is to say he’s not so much atop a hierarchy of wits as he is a genre unto himself. He sharply debunked, with peerless flair, not only the rituals of the upper crust but also the folly of life itself, no matter your social station. 

This award-winning hellzapoppin’ theatrical (there’s that halcyon term again) is adapted by brothers Robert and David Goodale from a Wodehouse novel The Code of the Woosters, described as “Bertie Wooster’s misadventures which his valet Jeeves must fix.” The setting is 1938 England in a Mayfair flat and at Totleigh Towers.

The plot is summarized as “Bertie Wooster gets into trouble at a country house weekend and must retrieve a silver cow creamer, with Jeeves and other characters helping (or hindering) him.” Sounds oh so simple, yes? Oh no. Not on your life.

For starters, we are watching a trio of tres talented actors play characters who are playing at acting. They are acting out for us Bertie’s self-indulgent, whimsical conceit to put on a – yes –  theatrical that illustrates his quandary.

I could go into more details of the plot, but, as director Owen Thompson allowed as we spoke after the show, the plot’s not really the point in wacky, woolly Wodehouse world. The convoluted plot (which can make you plotz) is, rather, as Mr. Thompson aptly put it, a MacGuffin – a device (deployed famously in Hitchcock movies) that moves things along but in the scheme of things, is largely immaterial to the story’s outcome. Sort of like a placebo. 

A Wodehouse fun house like this one features some improbable names attached to suitably improbable characters doing improbable things. There’s newt aficionado Gussie Fink-Nottle. And Sir Watkyn Bassett. Not to mention the lovely Stiffy Byng. 

Those dramatis personae (ha!) and more are animated to a fare thee well by only two – count ‘em – two actors, Mr. Guy and Mr. Lang, who bring to their poly-personality assignments proficient physical suppleness and chameleon-like chops. I started to keep track of how many characters they essay, and then gave up – their number outpaced my jottings. Within a single scene, the two actors might exit and enter the stage as four different characters with seamless precision. It’s a wonder audience members don’t suffer whiplash. 

Indicative of their quicksilver transformations is when Mr. Guy transports himself from a ramrod-straight Jeeves to a widely bow-legged, bent-over Gussie, wobbling around the stage as if he’s about to perform a face plant at any moment. For Mr. Lang’s part, when he’s not the doting control freak Aunt Dahlia, he might be the villainous if bumbling, dictatorially mustachioed Roderick Spode, whose sneers are sublime and whose otherwise average stature extends to ever-loftier heights with the help of foot stools, which, in this loopy universe, pass for special effects. How many shows have you seen where the props elicit laughs?

All the while, Mr. DeVary as Bertie – for whom all the world not only is a stage but a playground on which he blithely romps to his heart’s delight – is having a jolly ol’ time of it bopping about with his own brand of physical elasticity, leaning on Jeeves’ stiff-upper-lip laser focus to protect his callow charge, mostly from himself. 

Because what the audience is watching is a –wait for it – theatrical of Bertie’s own making, even the sets are wonderfully cheesy, by design, as if crafted by the actors themselves in haste, at Bertie’s beckoning.

The set design (supervised by Isabelle Favette) also can change character shift, with a Murphy bad that plops down from a flat designed as a bookshelf.  Under the bed serves as a hiding spot for Gussie, played by Mr. Guy, who crawls under it, but then suddenly is seen on stage as Jeeves. And so it goes, with that precision timing of exits and entrances sustained and expanded throughout. It can't be a simple matter of tea and crumpets for Mr. DeVary the actor to constantly adjust the manner in which he reacts to each of the multitude of characters he encounters, whilst knowing they always are the same two actors he's conversing with. 

Costume Designer Nancy Nichols earns huzzahs for putting together an authentic period ensemble that is distinctly British, such as a tweed hunting jacket and a constable's uniform. She also faced the functional challenge of outfitting the two multi-role actors in threads that need to constantly and instantly go on and off and over and under other layers of clothing. In a show–stopping wardrobe moment, one character relieves a lace curtain and lampshade of their official duties to press them into service as the latest in haute couture fashion.

Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense is at one with the sterling reputation burnished through the years at Schoolhouse Theater by its dynamic duo of highly refined tastemakers, Producing Director Bram Lewis and Artistic Director Owen Thompson. 

It’s hard to think of another professional theater in the Lower Hudson Valley with the keen sensibility and wherewithal to bring forth this rarely-seen work, continuing a throughline at Schoolhouse of producing choice theater of recent vintage, including the stunning Red by John Logan, Athol Fugard’s Master Harold and the Boys (also with Will DeVary), and Brian Friel’s Faith Healer, among others. It takes pedigreed theater practitioners like Messrs. Lewis and Thompson to treat suburban audiences to that caliber of theater sophistication. Bravo. 

Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense can be called slapstick or satire or even vaudeville or what have you. Simply put, it’s a tour de farce.

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