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Outside my window, spring is here.
The leaves on the honey locust are unfurling at last; the mourning doves are cooing.
And as the season wakes, so do my slumbering critical faculties.
Good and bad had stopped having meaning.
And then last night, bad came roaring back.
Its not necessarily news thatBy Jeevesis disappointing.
Webber loved the idea of adapting P.G.
Directors Ayckbourn and Nick Morris sometimes cut to a reaction shot, catching pained grins and uncomfortable seat-shifting.
But even after those 25 minutes of false beginnings, people warm slowly to the action.
Weve heard how they feel.
Once embarked upon,By Jeevess action is a triangle of confused identities.
What could be easier?
Or rather, its Jeeves who puts things right.
Why is that such a bummer?
First, after watching a puzzle-box play, its depressing to watch the puzzlemaker smash the box.
And second, something crucial to Wodehouses spirit is lost.
Wodehouse is crisp on the page because Jeeves is pure ice.
On stage, though, Jeeves is all too tepidly human.
This guy is just efficient.
Ayckbourn, who ought to have known better, takes P.G.
Wodehouses vodka-gimlet prose and turns it into soda pop.
goes another, a paean to Jeeves, and, apparently, nouns.
There is one song, though, that I can recommend.
Scroll to minute 41:25, when Donna Lynne Champlin enters the scene as Berties ex-fiancee Honoria Glossop.
The camera gets close to her and instead of looking tense, her eyes gleam with chaotic energies.
Champlin gives the song an art-song edge, a plumminess that shades from comedy into beauty and back again.
Was that one wonderful performance worth enduring two hours and twenty minutes of effortful unfunniness?
No, not exactly.
It was nice to remember that pearls found that way do gleam particularlybright.
