Perfect Nonsense

Farce can be, well, farcical. A peculiarly English affliction that can make lesser mortals wish they had booked an aisle seat. To define PG Wodehouse as pure farce would, I suspect, encourage a barrage of letters from betterinformed fans but in this instance, the whole conceit leaves little room for anything else. And it is all the better for it.

Perfect Nonsense, based on Wodehouse’s 1938 book The Code Of The Woosters, is a deft three-hander. Bertie, played with full self-deprecating embrace by Stephen Mangan, has decided to stage a West End play that attempts to re-tell his ordeal at having been dispatched to Totleigh Towers by Aunt Dahlia to steal an antique silver cowcreamer. Why? Who cares.

What we do know is that nothing will happen without Jeeves. Even a cursory attempt to dress himself for the start of his big adventure is met with the usual perfectly delivered derision: ‘There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, “Do trousers matter?”’ ‘The mood will pass, sir.’ Matthew Macfadyen delivers a performance to rival even Stephen Fry. But this being Wodehouse, the dramatists, in this case the remarkable Goodale brothers David and Robert, are faced with the small issue of the invariably large cast.

They get round this by some magnificent wig-swapping, door-dodging get-ups. Mark Hadfield is Aunt Dahlia’s doubled over, aged butler Seppings but he is also Aunt Dahlia, and the lunatic, moustached leader of the British Black-Shorts, Roderick Spode. He is superb in all his outfits and while Mangan is left just to be Bertie – he is the narrator after all – Macfadyen is worryingly convincing as Bertie’s bonkers former fiancée, Madeline Bassett.

Sean Foley’s direction doesn’t drop a ball and Alice Power’s clever set design is a triumph; no farce is complete without the chance to jump out of a fake window or hide under a revolving bed. But ultimately what makes the show so much better than many other attempts at adaptation is that so many of the original words are delivered by Bertie in his twin roles as colourful narrator and hapless pawn. Halfway through, there is a hint that he may have to walk Madeline down the aisle after all. The news, he explains to Jeeves, hit him like ‘one who has been picking daisies by the railway line and catches the 4.15 in the small of the back’.

The tickets aren’t free but the lines remain priceless.

Until 8 March 2014 at the Duke of York’s Theatre, St Martin’s Lane, London WC2: 0844-8717623, www.jeevesandwoosterplay.com