All the superheroes you see in this era of big-screen superhero worship wear dazzlingly loud costumes. But there’s one professionally reserved, eminently English superhero who needs nothing more than his conservative three-piece suit, bowler hat and endlessly bemused expression.
Jeeves, surely the greatest “gentleman’s gentleman” who ever lived, will gracefully save the world — or at least the ridiculous world of his goofy employer, Bertie Wooster — on Magenta Theater’s downtown Vancouver stage during the month of February. The comedy “Jeeves Intervenes” is set in London during the roaring, racy jazz age of the 1920s, but innocent airhead Bertie is quite oblivious to matters of courtship and romance. When he’s manipulated into an unintended engagement by Gertrude Winklesworth-Bode — and his chum Eustace Bassington-Bassington is condemned to undertake what’s known to most of us as “work” — it’s up to Jeeves the omnipotent valet to manipulate both of them back to safety.
You might say Britons grew up with Jeeves and Wooster the way Americans once grew up with Abbott and Costello. They’re the creation of author and humorist P.G. Wodehouse, who wrote musical comedy lyrics and farcical novels about the British upper crust before finding his most successful formula in these two characters: Bertie the genial, overcapitalized fool and Jeeves, the softly brilliant servant who really is the master.
Delicious wordplay is key to these well-heeled characters and their humor, according to Magenta’s founder and artistic director, Jaynie Roberts. If Jeeves ever thinks “You bloody ridiculous twit” about his employer, Roberts said, he certainly never voices anything so blatant; he’s more likely to intone, “Pardon me, sir, are you proposing to appear in those garments in public?” or, when confronted by Bertie’s attempt at a moustache, “I thought a caterpillar had lost its bearings.”
The Eloquent Wit of P.G. Wodehouse
“He felt like a man who, chasing rainbows, has had one of them suddenly turn and bite him in the leg.”
“If he had a mind, there was something on it.”
“It was one of those still evenings you get in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away.”
“I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”
“I pressed down the mental accelerator. The old lemon throbbed fiercely. I got an idea.”
“She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season.”
“I rather fancy it’s Shakespeare — or, if not, it’s some equally brainy lad — who says that it’s always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general, that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping.”
Wodehouse’s humor “is so dry, so clever, so graceful and eloquent,” said Roberts, who grew up in England — where a healthy sense of mockery toward the aristocracy “was very much a part of our culture.”
Bertie and his posh friends “are so lazy and privileged,” she said — but Wodehouse’s literary magic renders them laughably lovable too.
Southern accents
Things have diversified recently, but growing up in the workaday north of England used to mean speaking with an identifiably “common” accent, Roberts said. Meanwhile, folks who hailed from the wealthier south — like Bertie Wooster — inherited the grander, posher tones of what’s sometimes called “Oxford English” or “BBC English.”
One of the chief challenges of directing a half-dozen Americans in this very English play, she said, has been getting the accents right. Roberts, who grew up near Liverpool (home of the heavily accented Beatles) and then had her accent diluted by decades in America, has cautioned her cast not to copy her own hybridized pronunciation. “I’m not what I want them to be replicating,” she said.
Fortunately, actor Tim Klein has developed a fascination with accents and accuracy, Roberts said, and has assumed the additional role of guarding the cast’s speech against invasion by anything lower than the upper crust. “We have an American teaching us how to keep it properly English,” Roberts laughed.
In general, she said, directing a small group of actors in this comedy from her homeland has been a treat (especially after herding dozens of actors, dancers and musicians in her previous directorial effort, a Halloween musical). She only hopes the English show connects with this American town. Jeeves and Wooster are such an integral part of England, she said, she was surprised to announce this play and hear from some locals, “Who or what is Jeeves?”
In this production, Jeeves and Wooster are portrayed by Magenta veterans Phil Giesy and David Roberts. Casey Faubion is Bertie’s hapless friend Eustace and Tim Klein is Sir Rupert Watlington-Pips. Shaye Eller is the flirtatious Gertrude and Mary Durall-Dupree plays Bertie’s fearsome Aunt Agatha — a creature who, according to Bertie, “eats broken bottles and is strongly suspected of turning into a werewolf at the time of the full moon.”
Scott Hewitt: 360-735-4525; scott.hewitt@columbian.com; twitter.com/_scotthewitt
If You Go
• What: “Jeeves Intervenes,” adapted from the P.G. Wodehouse stories by Margaret Raether, directed by Jaynie Roberts.
• When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 9-10, 15-17, 22-23; 2 p.m. Feb. 17, 24.
• Where: Magenta Theater, 1108 Main St., Vancouver.
• Cost: $20 in advance, $22 at the door.
• Information: magentatheater.com; box office phone 360-635-4358.
