Writers: Richard Goodale and David Goodale, after P.G. Wodehouse
Director: Richard Avery
East Riding Theatre celebrated the first night of their joyously inventive production based on P.G. Wodehouse’s The Code of the Woosters by inviting all audience members to come in period dress for a fancy dress competition – strictly optional for everyone, including reviewers! Some splendid costumes – including a chap togged out in Bertie Wooster golfing gear – added to the jollity of the evening.
The rather cumbersome title refers to the fact that the play is acted out by Jeeves and Wooster – aided by Aunt Dahlia’s butler Seppings – in a frenzy of improvised costumes and set decoration. The Goodales and director Richard Avery get great value out of the fact that, for instance, Edmund Sage-Green may be playing Jeeves playing Sir Watkyn Bassett. The drawback, of course, is that too rarely do we see Jeeves as the gentleman’s gentleman: he is too busy donning absurd whiskers and stage-managing the whole business!
The plot is nonsense in itself. Bertie Wooster, that ever-willing pawn in the hands of Fate, is enjoined by his friends and relations to carry out pretty impossible tasks. His Aunt Dahlia enlists his aid in obtaining a cow creamer that her husband has his eye on, first by visiting the shop where it is on sale and disparaging it, then, after the beastly Sir Watkyn Bassett obtains it, going down to Totleigh Towers to steal it.
Secondly he has to ensure that his friend Gussie Fink-Nottle, that well-known newt fancier, gets his engagement to Sir Watkyn’s daughter, Madeline, back on track – a particularly urgent task because he himself is lined up as first reserve if Gussie drops out of the reckoning. Add in various incidents with a policeman’s helmet and such characters as the venomous Sir Roderick Spode, founder of the fascist Black Shorts, and Sir Watkyn’s niece, Stephanie, to whom Bertie is briefly engaged, and stir well. Needless to say, Jeeves solves all.
Aidan Thompson Coates has the luxury of playing just one character and, though hardly fitting our image of Bertie Wooster at first, soon wins over the audience with his cheerful helplessness and need for frequent reminders that he is in a play. Edmund Sage-Green (Jeeves) and Danny Mellor (Seppings) have a great time switching characters, meeting themselves coming and going, disappearing beneath the bed and then entering through the door, wearing assorted disguises and assuming absurd accents. Not all the impersonations work (notably Gussie as a cross between Cary Grant and Michael Crawford), but their sheer resourcefulness is a delight and both have their moments of glory, Sage-Green in a memorable conversation between Sir Watkyn and Stephanie, embodied in the same man, and Mellor as a truly monstrous Spode.
Richard Avery’s directorial touch is as light as it should be and Emily Clay’s set makes excellent use of East Riding’s wingless stage, expanding and changing constantly and making a virtue of improvisation – with the aid of ASM Charlotte Dunham as an all-purpose maid. Bertie Wooster’s costumes are rather odd, but the disguises work beautifully – the dafter, the better.
Runs until 26 September 2026
The Reviews Hub Star Rating
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8
