Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps...
I saw Perfect Nonsense, the new Jeeves and Wooster play at the Duke of York Theatre, London yesterday.
I cannot express the joy I felt in the second half when the curtain rose and Stephen Mangan, grinning like an amiable loon, was sitting in his bath, toying with a rubber duck. For two pins I would've marched up on the stage and taken him home with me! There were also some very clever slow-motion business with a cow creamer, a beautiful and crazy set, and a wonderful dog on a stick (which sounds wrong when I write it down)
It was a lovely show - one of the funniest I have seen - as Bertie (Mangan), Jeeves (Matthew Macfadyen) and Aunt Dahlia's butler, Seppings (Mark Hadfield) re-enacted The Code of the Woosters with just the three of them. Seppings took on most of the characters and made an hilarious Roderick Spode, the amateur dictator - growing taller with every appearance until he couldn't even get through the door. Jeeves took on other characters including Sir Watkin Bassett and Styffy Bing, and in one memorable scene, acted them having a row, dressed half as Sir Watkin and half as Styffy. He made a fabulously wimpy Gussie Fink-Nottle too.
It was all inspiring stuff, and jolly clean and clever. You could take your granny and even, dare I say it, an aunt...
(BTW, if you do go, do not have a seat in the stalls nearer the front than Row B - we were in B and the view was great, but I don't see how anyone in Row AA saw anything as the stage was above their heads and a mere foot or so in front of them)
I cannot express the joy I felt in the second half when the curtain rose and Stephen Mangan, grinning like an amiable loon, was sitting in his bath, toying with a rubber duck. For two pins I would've marched up on the stage and taken him home with me! There were also some very clever slow-motion business with a cow creamer, a beautiful and crazy set, and a wonderful dog on a stick (which sounds wrong when I write it down)
It was a lovely show - one of the funniest I have seen - as Bertie (Mangan), Jeeves (Matthew Macfadyen) and Aunt Dahlia's butler, Seppings (Mark Hadfield) re-enacted The Code of the Woosters with just the three of them. Seppings took on most of the characters and made an hilarious Roderick Spode, the amateur dictator - growing taller with every appearance until he couldn't even get through the door. Jeeves took on other characters including Sir Watkin Bassett and Styffy Bing, and in one memorable scene, acted them having a row, dressed half as Sir Watkin and half as Styffy. He made a fabulously wimpy Gussie Fink-Nottle too.
It was all inspiring stuff, and jolly clean and clever. You could take your granny and even, dare I say it, an aunt...
(BTW, if you do go, do not have a seat in the stalls nearer the front than Row B - we were in B and the view was great, but I don't see how anyone in Row AA saw anything as the stage was above their heads and a mere foot or so in front of them)