Jeeves in Bloom at NC Stage Co.
In a world that often feels as if it’s spiraling into political, social, economic, and atmospheric chaos, NC Stage Co. offers the comforting comic chaos of Jeeves in Bloom, playwright Margaret Raether’s riff on the stories and characters of English humorist P.G. Wodehouse.
It’s the latest of NC Stage’s signature outings with the misadventures of amiable upper-class twit Bertie Wooster and his unflappable gentleman’s gentleman Jeeves, who always comes to his rescue. Over the past decade, the Jeeves comedies have settled into the company’s winter calendar with the reassuring regularity of a wool overcoat coming out of a cedar chest.
When Jeeves in Bloom opens, there’s a moment of calm as Jeeves (an understated Simon Boughey) enters a formal garden setting and stands checking his pocket watch. Shouting erupts offstage, and Bertie (a kinetic and elastic Scott Treadway) hurtles on, chased by a cleaver-wielding French chef (a droll Adam Kampouris), with others in the cast hot on their heels. They’re all are about to crash into Jeeves when he stops them with the announcement, “It is with sincere regret that I am forced to tender my resignation, effective immediately.” More shouting erupts.
Director Angie Flynn-McIver sets this maniacal pace and high decibel tone at the top and keeps it going almost straight through the two-act show.
The plot of Jeeves in Bloom is a complicated contraption, like a cuckoo clock with springs and gears and little mechanical figures popping in and out of doors.
Bertie has been summoned to the country estate of his Aunt Dahlia to help her rescue her financially troubled magazine, Milady’s Boudoir. As the domineering Dahlia, Callan White has the formidable presence to steamroll Bertie. She also has an infectious laugh and the perfect helmet of platinum blonde hair.
Aunt Dahlia has invited romantic writer Madeline Bassett (a wonderfully simpering Trinity Smith Keel), the adored niece of her husband Tom (a blustering John Hall) to soften him up to supply funds. She’s also going to have French chef Anatole prepare Tom’s favorite dinner. If those ploys fail, she’ll commandeer Bertie to burgle the family jewels.
Meanwhile, Bertie’s painfully shy chum Gussie Fink-Nottle (a delightfully tongue-tied Charlie Flynn-McIver) has arrived seeking Jeeves’s and Bertie’s help overcoming his verbal paralysis when he tries to act on a sudden infatuation with the very same Madeline.
Gussie is obsessed with newts. He can be eloquent when he’s describing the male newt’s tail-shaking courtship behavior. But he can barely choke out a syllable when he’s courting Madeline. Both tail-shaking and syllable-choking earn Flynn-McIver some of the show’s best laughs.
Bertie promptly invites Gussie along to Aunt Dahlia’s, where classic farce devices — disguises, mistaken identities, moonlight assignations, cross-talk, concealments, a hidden manuscript — keep the action and the laughs going almost nonstop.
With five previous Jeeves productions under its belt, the NC Stage team knows how daunting these scripts’ mix of farce and comedy of manners can be. They’re The Importance of Being Earnest at the clip of Noises Off. The director and the cast keep the seesaw hovering neatly between slapstick and repartee.
And, boy, do they keep the show’s motor revved. In the preview performance I saw, only Simon Boughey was a little subdued. His Jeeves could have used more edge, more deadpan snark.
Here’s where Treadway’s Bertie and Charlie Flynn-McIver as his comedic foil Gussie shine. Whether knocking each other about or exchanging pointed looks, they are as comfortable and engaging together as, well, Fry and Laurie. The accomplished Treadway especially excels in both physical comedy and witty dialogue. He combines the loose-limbed ease of a Dick Van Dyke with the vocal swoops of a Maggie Smith.
The pleasing overall look of the production is the work of scenic designer Julie K. Ross Howard, costume designer Tory Depew, and lighting designer Miguel Santiago. Depew’s elegant period costumes add particular polish.
Why does Jeevesian chaos console when real-world chaos threatens? In Wodehouse’s universe, the stakes are momentous to those involved and totally inconsequential to everyone else. The Jeeves comedies are a safe space where competence, embodied in a perfectly pressed valet, quietly prevails. Their humor depends not on cruelty or satire, but on a compact between stage and audience that order will be restored by the end of the performance and life will remain manageable.
Like the Marx Brothers at the races, the opera, or the circus, these comedies are a gallery of beloved characters continually reshuffled into new predicaments. NC Stage has a winning formula, inviting us back to watch a skilled cohort of actors set the ingenious Jeeves machine in motion once again.
Jeeves in Bloom runs through February 22. For tickets and more information, visit ncstage.org.
(Photo courtesy of NC Stage Co.)
