By Jeeves – The Landor Theatre, London *****

Written for The Public Reviews

Although well-loved by many, the Jeeves and Wooster novels are an acquired taste; you really have to go in for their particular brand of silliness to enjoy them fully. I thought it would take a fan of the novels to appreciate this stage version by Alan Auckbourn and Andrew Lloyd Webber, but my plus-one, who has never read a Wodehouse book and has only glanced at the televised Fry and Laurie take on the buffoonish Wooster and his inimitable gentleman’s gentleman, was entertained and completely won-over by this production.

The play follows the story of one of the Jeeves novels, or may take elements from a number of them – it is hard to tell when they are all so similar. It inevitably involves mistaken identities, twisted love triangles and layer upon layer of confusion and farcical nonsense which presents an impossible mess. The confusion can only be straightened out by the logical Jeeves who always seems to step in a few moments later than he could have; Paul Meston gives us a Jeeves who enjoys his role as arbiter and the power this gives him to make Wooster suffer, just a bit, for his rather perfunctory treatment of him.

It may stick closely to the content of the books but the play is significantly different from them in that it uses the clever device of narrating a story within the frame of an entertainment at the parish hall, which re-enacts the events of Wooster’s visit to the house of Sir Watkyn Bassett. This allows the characters to be self-aware; they refer to props, dramatic convention and the arrival of the deus ex machina which will conveniently arrive to help Wooster out of a tricky plot cul-de-sac. By being self-referential in this way, Wodehouse’s plots and characters are presented as being knowingly contrived. The novels, in comparison, are somewhat naïve in that they invite the reader into the farcical world of the story but never shift the focus out again – we appreciate Wodehouse’s story craft but the characters must be a bit simple never to see past the ludicrous disguises and the extraordinarily unbelievable turn of events. By Jeeves celebrates Wodehouse’s comic genius and the brilliance of his ridiculous plots; the dramatic form allows the characters to become shrewd but retain their silliness, so that we see that their naivety is just a performance and we can credit them, and the audience, with some intelligence.

The cast performed with verve and energy and a special mention must go to the choreographer, Andrew Wright, who had to work with the challenges of such a small space but managed to accompany the songs with great comic movement. The stage really was too small and, although conducive to the setting of the parish hall, the actors would have benefitted from having more room to maneuver: there was an unfortunate incident where a dance routine resulted in someone in the front row receiving a cracking blow to the shin – luckily it came at the moment of Stiff and Stinker’s clumsy love dance and so was totally in context. There were a few bloopers and fudged lines but these added to the cobbled together charm of this village entertainment. Rather than a straight dramatisation of the novels, this is a new approach which brings something extra to the original books and characters as well as being great fun.

Runs until 5th March

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Water – The Tricycle Theatre, London ***

Written for The Public Reviews

Water played at the Lyric Hammersmith in autumn 2007 and here it is again at the Tricycle in association with the Lyric. The themes this play tackles are still fresh and very now: climate change is something which can’t be ignored when can no longer escape the ever increasing frequency of freak weather conditions and natural disasters afflicting the planet.

So it is a disappointment that Water doesn’t engage with the urgency and immediacy of the issues it sets out to address. The project here is to reduce these global problems down to a personal level – and using this reduced scale, Filter hopes to show us that these issues impact on all of us and that it is within our power to make a change.

A man hears that his estranged father, a professor at a Canadian university, has died and he must travel to his funeral and meet his half-brother. A woman works for the coalition government and attends a summit on climate change in Canada; she is fighting for the creation of a law to enforce the reduction of emissions, but her commitment to her work is destroying her relationship with her cave-diving boyfriend. Both characters converge in the same hotel yet pass each other without ever connecting, but during the course of the play they learn important lessons about compromise and the need to understand others.

If it seems that this play is about everything but climate change then you need to read the programme which includes interviews with the cast, and a disquisitional couple of paragraphs on the purpose of the project, without which I’m not sure the play would have held together for me. There should be no need for textual backup – the play should be complete of itself and make sense without recourse to outside information. So they play germinated from the memory a cast member has of being in a boat on a lake with his father. This then leads to the idea of togetherness, someone’s idea to create a piece about ‘water’, and the politics of climate change. These all seem very disparate, and they are, until drawn together by the notion that water molecules are unique in that they don’t repel each other like most others. Like water molecules, people need to connect, see the bigger picture, and compromise their individuality for the greater good, just as countries across the world need to set aside their particular economic and political agendas and agree to cut emissions at their own expense. So far, so very liberal.

The message is admirable but how realistic is it? I came away feeling that this was rather a naïve way of looking at such an important global issue but I was engaged by the experience, even incensed, and so Filter did succeed in that respect. It must also be said that the performance was visually arresting and innovatively performed. The set, with its large flat screens and laptops, realistically conjured slick modernity and acted as a counterpoint to the more banal uses we put technology to such checking an online inbox on Match.com. The three actors switch between characters with consummate skill and, in a short amount of time, make us care about each one of them. Filter creates a unique and ingenious theatrical experience which doesn’t seek to hide the mechanics of theatre, but their special effects did all seem to come at the beginning of the play and then taper off making their efforts feel gimmicky at times.

I couldn’t not enjoy a performance which transformed the stage into a magical aquarium with floating balloon fish, but despite Filter’s efforts to produce a meaningful meditation on climate change, the stark contrast between the political and whimsically philosophical ultimately didn’t pay off.

Runs until 5th March

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