REVIEW: Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense – at the Festival Theatre, Malvern, from Monday, March 30 until Saturday, April 4, 2015.

IT’S not that often a Malvern audience is roused enough on opening night to clear their throats and cheer as loudly as they did for this rumbustious romp which fully lived up to the label in dishing up the most wonderful nonsense that was pure perfection.

Already a West End hit and top comedy award winner, it’s now boisterously and joyfully winging its way around the country on a hugely successful UK tour.

The tales of Jeeves and Wooster are not to everyone taste’s – it’s like that old debate about Marmite – but this take on English eccentricity is worth a shot for the sheer effort of the cast of just three along with the outstanding visual gags they provide.

A now relatively new play that has been adapted by the Goodale brothers from the works of PG Wodehouse, it is cleverly wrapped around the old favourite to provide what is quintessentially a celebration of another age of Englishness so beloved by Bertie.

The original novels are all written by Wooster in the first person and this offering follows the same line, only this time he is recounting his travails as a stage play. After all - how difficult can it be, this acting lark, he wonders early on.

At a loss to take the action forward he is forced to call upon Jeeves for assistance and so the hilarious evening, assisted by the combined writing talents of David and Robert Goodale – Wodehouse fans and inventors of other extraordinary characters themselves, swiftly and stylishly unfolds.

Director Sean Foley, a proven and award winning hand with the show since its inception, has his charges and the production buzzing along like a well oiled tram of 1930s vintage and makes good use of the revolving stage to add to the farce-like proceedings.

In certain respects it could all be considered a complex adaptation – yet really it’s a very simple story with the real complexities involving two of the cast playing multi-roles, in this case the entire gathering at a country house and it’s these madcap moments of constant role-swaps that are so endearing and highly amusing. Bertie is always himself - well not all of the time!

For this Wooster escapade he and Jeeves drive down to Totleigh Towers where he must act not only as matchmaker for old friend Gussie Fink-Nottle but also steal a silver creamer for his uncle! Cue further encounters with ‘lengthening’ dictator Spode, his crazy Aunt Dahlia (who may have conjured up visions of Old Mother Riley for older heads in the audience) and Seppings, the doddery butler.

It’s all absolutely absurdly brilliant as are Robert Webb (Wooster), Jason Thorpe (Jeeves and others) and Chris Ryan (Seppings and also others).

The overlapping roles, together with faces full of confusion and panic, and the sheer genius of their comic timing, all help ensure this was not nonsense... but it sure was perfect.