Now that we've all had our fill of critics telling us "what we need right now" (one would hope), I'm going to come right out and say what we don't need: lackluster Broadway shows that have found residence on the Great White Way out of a desire to fulfill audiences' cravings for frivolity, an excuse to suck away two hours or more of time and be convinced they're doing some good to the theater community. By Jeeves could the most odious example yet. This British production with a high pedigree (music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, direction and story by Alan Ayckbourn, based on stories by P.G. Wodehouse) has taken several years to reach America, seemingly because funding could not be secured. The musical was slated before the terrorist attacks to open at the Helen Hayes Theater (an independently run house, the only one left like it), and then the show suddenly found itself homeless again until an angel appeared at the 11th hour and saved it to ensure it would open on time. Well, here it is and after enduring it, I can't help but wonder why everyone went through so much trouble and so much money, almost none of which seems anywhere in evidence on stage.
It's not that By Jeeves is an awful show by design, in fact, I can see a tip-top British production slaying audiences on the West End (which reportedly, it did). But this is far from tip-top, more like tip-toppling under its own foolishness. This tale of a refined gentleman named Bertie Wooster (John Scherer) who goes on an adventure of mistaken identities and cross purposes with faithful butler Jeeves (Martin Jarvis) has possibilities, and director Ayckbourn goes out of his way to make sure none of them surface. The director is known mostly for playwriting, and it's yet another example of why playwrights should never direct their own material. This affair is limp and deadening, with almost no intended laugh being earned because the production is so formless, so amateurish in design. It's almost as if everyone involved forgot it was supposed to be a comedy, kind of like Noises Off without the chuckles and carefully-structured mayhem. It defines the word labored, as the cast contorts itself into pretzels to try and remind you that it's all supposed to be funny.
And let's not forget, it's a musical, though the makers sure seem to. Webber's score is his most perfunctory to date, not even providing the requisite bombast that at least raise the pulse a bit, whether you like his scores or not. The songs, all duds, feel arbitrary and shoehorned into the silly story just to wake the crowd up and give them a reprieve from the one-liners that fall embarrassingly flat.
Ayckbourn's handling of the actors is even more misguided. For the pivotal roles of Wooster and Jeeves, he's given actors Scherer and Jarvis one tip apiece. The former double takes and crinkles his face after very single line delivery (whether it applies or not), and the latter delivers every line in a monotone British drawl to sound just like the stereotypical English butler we all thought went out of style pre-Noel Coward. And Scherer and Jarvis do nothing to make the evening any easier to sit through, succumbing to every bad actorly impulse one could have. Characters have no depth and are given one trait apiece. One says things out of order, one is bitchy, one is a bubblehead, another is obsessed with jelly, etc. The supporting players fare somewhat better, but it's all for naught.
Most troubling about By Jeeves is how inconsequential it all is. The show is seemingly about nothing, content to be about nothing, but can't even muster up enough energy to do nothing with style. You're left with two-plus hours of high-school level theatrics with a score that an upstart Juilliard student could have penned during a band rehearsal. Is this what "we really need right now"?
