Quotations from P G Wodehouse are copyright of, and reprinted by permission of, the Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate © 2012 The P G Wodehouse Society (UK)

Come On, Jeeves - performed by

The Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre

By Norman Murphy

It was John Turnbull who told us at the last Society meeting in the Arts Club that his amateur theatrical group (The Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre) was performing Come On, Jeeves from 13th to 20th March, so Elin and I decided to go down and see it.

The Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre (Beech Walk, Crayford, Kent) is an amateur dramatic society, part of the Little Theatre organisation. They do ten plays a year, have about eighty members taking an active part, around fourteen hundred supporter members and are clearly an enthusiastic body. One always has slight reservations about amateur companies but I am happy to say that any such reservations I might have had were soon dispelled. From the beginning, it was clear that the play was being performed in the right Wodehouse spirit. Since the director, John Turnbull, is a member of the UK Society, I suppose this was only to be expected.

Come On, Jeeves was written by Wodehouse and Guy Bolton and subsequently became the novel Ring For Jeeves, but the differences between the dramatic and book versions are so slight, I shall not bother to mention them. The setting was the drawing room of Towcester Abbey and included that vital ingredient in all classic comedies of the period – a French window onto the garden, which allowed for the dramatic exits and entrances so important to the plot.

The play opened with the entrance of Lord Towcester’s sister, Lady Monica Carmoyle, and her husband, Rory, enormously proud of his status as a shop walker at Harrod’s but given to saying exactly the wrong thing at the worst possible time. Played by Sarah Tortell and Gary Heron, both made the most of their part and played them for all they were worth. They were then joined on stage by the heroine, the pretty young vet Jill Wyvern played by Catherine Addy.

My first impression was that Miss Addy was the only member of the cast with whom I could find fault. Her voice was a trifle too light and she seemed unable to throw herself into the part with the enthusiasm shown by her fellows. But, on reflection, she had the hardest part to play. While everybody else had a comic aspect to emphasise, either as a bully (Captain Biggar), a weak young man caught up in a maelstrom of difficulties (Lord Towcester) or the over-the-top wealthy American (Mrs Spottsworth), Jill Wyvern had to play the ‘straight’ part of a girl worried about her fiancé’s troubles which she knows are being hidden from her.

Sarah Tortell as Lady Monica Carmoyle (photo by Robert Piwko)

After this, Lord Towcester made his entrance in the bookie’s tweeds, false moustache and eye-patch of Honest Patch Perkins. Played by Jon Meakin, his growing horror as the discovery of his secret life became ever more likely was excellent and his dependence on Jeeves was exactly what one would expect. His voice, demeanour and attitude were that of Bertie, Freddie Widgeon or any other member of the Drones.

Jon Meakin as William Egerton Bamflyde Ossingham Belfry, 9th Earl of Towcester, dressed for his day job (photo by Robert Piwko)

As Jeeves, John Wilson had the hardest part to play. He was the character everybody knew, the character everybody recognised, and he met the task superbly. My first scribbled notes have ‘V.Solemn’ and ‘portentous’ but that was simply because I also had my own fixed ideas of what Jeeves looked like and sounded like. I changed my mind, however, as the play progressed. His manner of grave respect to his employer and his tone of voice when tendering advice was exactly right while his emotion when he described Bertie Wooster’s decision to learn how to make a bed and darn his own socks was masterly. A polished performance in every sense of the word.

John Wilson as Jeeves (photo by Robert Piwko)

Both Elin and I thought the second and third Acts were better than the first but, on reflection, that was a tribute to the cast. We both knew the characters and the plot so well, any variation in emphasis or tone of voice struck us as a weakness, a fault. But, almost as soon as the second Act began, that feeling vanished. They all played it so well and in such the right spirit, that we were simply swept along by their skill and the humour of the play.

Captain Biggar, whose name enabled Rory Carmoyle to annoy everybody with his recollections of his childhood – “Which is bigger? Mr Biggar or Mrs Biggar?” ­­– was played by Paul Wharton and I thought he performed the part superbly. He was the Great White Hunter to the life and his sonorous intoning of the three factors to avoid out East: “Drink! Women! And – (exactly timed pause) – unpaid gambling debts. Those are the steps down.” could not have been bettered. By way of contrast, his confusion when Mrs Spottsworth, very well played by Penny Walshe, made clear her feelings for him was equally good and the embarrassment on his face when he reluctantly admitted that his first name was “Cuthbert!” earned him a well-deserved laugh from the audience.

The final chaotic scene when the Chief Constable (Roger Gollop) was trying to investigate the theft of the pendant was one of those climaxes Wodehouse excelled at. With the rest of the cast intent on listening to the Derby on the radio and only Jeeves paying him any attention, the whole theatre was imbued with the right sense of tension and excitement. Jeeves’ final brainwave – to suggest moving the Abbey to California – brought a delightful evening to an end.

Four high spots deserve particular mention. It will be a long time before I forget the two attempts by Jeeves and Lord Rowcester to get the betting ticket off Captain Biggar by force. In the first, they end up nearly killing each other; in the second, they nearly kill Mrs Spottsworth as well. The Charleston performed by Lord Rowcester and Mrs Spottsworth was danced with all the exuberant energy required to displace an adhesive pendant from the lady’s neck, but done with sufficient control to avoid hitting the furniture in a crowded set. But I suppose the most dramatic moment was the appearance of the ghost of Lady Agatha (Jeeves in disguise) in the doorway, which brought a stunned silence broken only by his quiet “The pendant, my lord” as he held it out.

It would be unfair not to mention Sally-Ann O’Callaghan, who played Ellen the maid, not to mention Mrs Spottsworth’s dog Pomona, played by a well-behaved canine named Louie. The set was superb, and John Turnbull’s excellent direction reflected his love of Wodehouse.

A hugely enjoyable evening and one I shall long remember. I am very glad I went.

The director, John Turnbull, has written an interesting piece to go along with this performance, as though written by Bertram Wooster:

Most people, even my more intellectually-challenged fellow-members of the Drones Club, will know something of the exploits of that paragon among men, Reginald Jeeves. Indeed many will have read the many tales of his triumphs as recorded by his young master, Bertram Wooster, Esq.

But the history about to be related at the Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre in the County of Kent is unique in several ways:

First, it is the only record of the great man’s feats in which Yours Truly does not appear. The reason for my absence from what we might quite literally call the scene during these events will be made clear during the course of the performance; but suffice it to say that it is an episode not to be recalled without a shudder.

For reasons too painful to relate here, we find Jeeves instead in the service of William Egerton Bamflyde Ossingham Belfry, ninth Earl of Towcester, of whom it can at least be said that his easy charm, good looks and intellect perfectly match the attributes of his regular employer.

In secundo parte, as Jeeves is wont to say, it is the only chronicle of his activities to be first set down not as a history, but as a drama. It is sometimes forgotten that Mr Wodehouse, though famed as a novelist of the lighter sort, was also a consummate man of the theatre.

He wrote eighteen plays, thirty-three musical comedies and the lyrics for many more. He collaborated with such composers as Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Ivor Novello and Cole Porter, not to mention his collaborator for more than forty years, the long-suffering Guy Bolton. Indeed, along with Bolton and Kern, he is credited as one of the founders of the modern American musical comedy. At one point he had five shows running simultaneously (as Jeeves would put it) on Broadway. He was also a drama critic, but perhaps the less said about that particular sub-species of humanity, the better.

Most who have been fortunate enough to come across Jeeves on stage and screen have of course been watching dramatisations of novels. In the case of Come On, Jeeves it was the other way, as it were, around. Only afterwards was the play adapted into a novel, which the discerning reader will know as Ring for Jeeves (1953).

And that date, as our detective novelists are inclined to remark, contains a clue. For though Jeeves first came to the public’s attention (in a disgracefully minor role) as early as 1917, his exploits are usually associated with that golden period between the World Wars when a young gentleman-about-town of independent means could don a carefree pair of spats without fear of the social revolution.

But tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis, as I have often heard Jeeves remark; and social changes since the Second World War have altered the landscape in ways hitherto undreamed of in my circles. In other words, life is real and life is earnest, as I believe the Bard or some other Johnny might have said.

But the English gentleman will always adapt, and William, Earl of Towcester is no exception. It is with this reassuring thought that I leave you in his company, and that, of course, of Jeeves.

They will, I feel sure, endeavour to give satisfaction. Toodle-pip!

Bertram