If you should see the names Graham Hopkins, Robert Fridjhon and Jonathan Roxmouth on a poster advertising Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, it would feel like a gig that will never stop dancing.
And that’s exactly what it is. Think Around the World in 80 Days, or 39 Steps, and you will know exactly what you’re letting yourself in for.
Introduce the Kickstart team with Stephen Stead directing and Greg King designing and it’s a full house. Chatting to the unflappable Hopkins and sitting in on some early rehearsals, it’s an easy one to declare a winner and perfect for this time of year.
We’re already winding down and awfully tired of this year’s shenanigans, so please allow us to take a step into another world and let PG Wodehouse add some bright colours to our lives. And he will, in large brushstrokes with three of the best blokes to say and play his words.
Because there’s lots of play, just look at the title! It’s all perfect nonsense say the lads with huge winks.
“I’m still struggling with the Jeeves turn of phrase,” says Hopkins, who is playing the prissy butler to Roxmouth’s well-intentioned Wooster.
But he could have added that both he and Fridjhon are swapping characters more quickly than you can change into dandy socks and shoes. As people step in and out of this preposterous tale, so do these two boys swap costumes and crazy chatter.
It’s not only the language and the lines which have to be delivered in a frenzy with a certain rhythm and usually as swift as the flick of a finger. It’s also the moves.
One minute Hopkins is the overpowering dame and the next, he’s barking in Wooster’s ear about someone who has lost control.
It’s all about a show that is presented as Bertie Wooster’s own amateurish re-enactment of a recent adventure. Think Hamlet and the play within a play and you will have an idea. It’s a gloriously fun romp, but the boys are still battling and are not sure they’re going to pull it off.
Both Stead and I know differently. We can see the flashes of brilliance and even when they’re not yet at full tilt, it’s a riotous carnival.
“I saw it in London a little while back,” says Hopkins, and giving a huge wink he says, “We’ll be better”.
He also assures that even if this is entertainment with all the spotlights blazing, it’s not without substance. The sheer majesty of their performances will also ensure that. I know I’m talking them up and almost hexing the show, but I’m that confident. It’s just one of those things. It’s been done before and if you get the talent right, it cannot fail. This is one of those times.
If you know the Wodehouse novels, this one takes a number of books and pulls many of the characters across plot and time. And the other ace up their sleeves is designer King, the master of skulduggery when it comes to making things work and expanding into realms that many would have thought impossible.
This is a play about content, performance but also about props.
There’s hardly a sneeze that comes without a visual prop, a word without a bubble floating by. But that’s also the thing about this cast. They’ve all got many strings to their bow and bring all their talents to the stage.
Roxmouth will add to the music (naturally), Hopkins will slyly add an extra vowel or the sly slipping of a pointed shoe through the cracks while Fridjhon just seems to be having a blast as he helps the stage manager with the sheer madness of shifting everything on time.
It’s one of those mad romps where from sheer laughing, you’re as exhausted as this madcap cast by the end of it all. But you will leave the theatre with a smile and in wonder at what this kind of exuberant talent can achieve.
Don’t miss it. It has a season at Theatre on the Bay from Friday to November 8, followed by a season on Pieter Toerien’s Studio Stage at Monte from November 14 to January 11.