Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford – until 4th February 2023
Reviewed by Antonia Hebbert
4****
It’s 1950, and P.G. Wodehouse is writing a new story in his phenomenally popular Jeeves and Wooster series. Easier said than done, as his wife (Ethel, aka Bunny) calls for breakfast, the Pekingese dogs need a walk, and he is being pursued by an earnest young man who wants to write his biography. So far, so jolly, in a scenario that’s a little like, well, something written by P.G. Wodehouse.
But there is a dark undertone. P.G. Wodehouse, known as Plum, has exiled himself in America. At the start of World War II he was living in France, was interned by the invading Germans, and made himself dreadfully unpopular back home by doing humorous broadcasts about being an internee. It is easy to see now the sort of pressure he was under, but at the time he was condemned as a traitor. He moved to New York after the war, settled in Long Island, and eventually started writing again. (Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, you can find his rather nice home through Google.)
Robert Daws plays Wodehouse, and does this show singlehanded, in a very realistic but rather bland set of a sitting room/study. He talks directly to the audience, sometimes as if writing a letter to his beloved stepdaughter Leonora (aka Snorky), sometimes as if responding to the pesky biographer Mr Phillips. He reads from one of his books, and sings musical theatre songs for which he wrote the lyrics – Wodehouse worked in Hollywood and on Broadway, as well as writing books. And he talks on the phone to his great friend the writer Guy Bolton, who was surely an inspiration for Galahad Threepwood, in the Blandings Castle stories.
While laughing off Mr Phillips’s probing questions, Daws/Wodehouse reveals extraordinary things. Wodehouse was born in Hong Kong, and was sent to England at the age of two, to be raised by various aunts (if you are a fan of Wodehouse, this makes you jump – his fictional aunts are daunting). By the age of 15 he had seen his parents twice. This casts a whole new light on the sunny innocence of the Wodehouse stories, and perhaps on the compulsion to ‘get a laugh’ that made him do the wartime broadcasts – a rare example of poor comic timing. In the second half, there is also a heart-wrenching shock.
If you like P.G. Wodehouse’s books, you will surely find this play by William Humble very charming and moving. It has made me want to go back to the books, in the hope that they will still seem as ingeniously funny as I remember. The director is Robin Herford.