Robert Daws has lots of previous form on PG Wodehouse: he has played in various Jeeves and Woosters through the ages, with Hugh Laurie, Stephen Mangan and Ian Carmichael. So he is steeped in Wodehouse’s wonderland.
That shows in his ease with this one-man play about the comic writer. He is a natural as “Plum”, the affectionate name that Wodehouse went by. Premiering as a touring show some years ago, and directed by Robin Herford, it is well oiled enough if wooden and unadventurous in its storytelling.
It is the 1950s, Wodehouse is in his New York state home, writing another Jeeves and Wooster book. Wodehouse’s wife Ethel (“Bunny”) occasionally asks for a drink as an off-stage voice, while he writes letters to his beloved daughter “Snorkles” (his affectionate name for Leonora).
That serves as a plodding form of exposition and backstory in William Humble’s script, although Wodehouse tells us himself that he is not one for deep thinking so we do not get much of his inner world. There is a further framing device in the shape of an American biographer who wants to write Wodehouse’s life story – he functions as another listener to whom Wodehouse can narrate his life and thoughts.
The humour is lukewarm and predictable, with many spiffings, top-holes and cricketing metaphors for good measure. Occasionally, he sings. You certainly learn things about Wodehouse’s world but he does not turn into flesh and blood.
The play becomes more interesting when it touches on Wodehouse’s controversial speeches in the second world war, recorded by the Nazis to be broadcast in the US. They followed his year-long internment and were taken in Britain as a sign of his complicity. It veers into darker territory still when we hear about his daughter’s fate. But just as Wodehouse does not like depth, so this comes too late and is too quickly smoothed over. It makes for an anodyne drama with not nearly enough comic bite.