Perfect Nonsense: First Night Review

I've just returned from watching the opening night of Perfect Nonsense in Richmond and have to say the play is brilliant. It all begins with Stephan Mangan (Bertie Wooster) doing a bad job of narrating the play to the audience until Jeeves (Matthew Macfadyen) steps in to save the play... so to speak. 

The laughs begin immediately.  I was expecting Mangan to be the funny buffoon while Macfadyen was to be the straight man.  Instead, you almost felt the funny man was more the straight man while the straight man played more of the comic.  Don't get me wrong, both were hilarious, but Matthew had some of the funniest delivered lines in the most outrageous costumes.  In the beginning, I thought Mark Hadfield (billed as Seppings the butler) might end up stealing the show.  His Aunt Dahlia had the audience clapping in laughter, quickly followed by the dictator-like Roderick Spode.  But Matthew Macfadyen had even bigger laughs and claps when he showed up as both Sir Watkyn Bassett and Stiffy Byng at the same time!

The play remains energetic through out with quick costume changes and even quicker set changes.  A word of warning, if you are sitting in the rows nearest the stage, ask to move if you can.  Your view will be severely obstructed.  (at least in Richmond).  Hopefully this will be fixed in Brighton and the West End.

The finale where the three actors dance with the audience clapping along was the perfect ending to a perfect nonsense.

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Ripper Street S2: Still from Episode 1 "Pure as the Driven"

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Ripper Street S2: Inspector Reid Photo

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Perfect Nonsense: new Telegraph interview

The Telegraph has shared this gorgeous new photo and great interview with Matthew, Stephen Mangan and Sean Foley.

Matthew Macfadyen will bring to his Jeeves the same still poker face he deployed to such effect in Spooks, but having starred in Private Lives (opposite Kim Cattrall), he also knows about stage mayhem. So that’s all tickety-boo. But there is a twist. In what is being billed as An Evening with Jeeves and Wooster, there is just one other actor in the cast. So in this adaptation of The Code of the Woosters — the one with the cow creamer — who is going to play Roderick Spode, Sir Watkyn Bassett, Gussie Fink-Nottle, Stiffy Byng and, with no actress on the payroll, the redoubtable Aunt Dahlia? The answer is that the ever resourceful Jeeves will, with the help of his valeting colleague Seppings. He will also supply set, costumes and lighting.

Perfect Nonsense: new Telegraph interview
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Ambassadors: Behind the Scenes look and the meaning of POD

BBC Media has posted a behind the scenes look at the upcoming Ambassadors for BBC Two.  If you live in the UK, you can view the video HERE.

They are a team under constant, competing pressures: pressures from London keen to ensure UK PLC doesn't miss out on lucrative business contracts in an emerging oil rich nation; pressure from his under-funded, under-resourced embassy struggling to maintain an image of Britain as an important global political heavyweight; and pressure to maintain good relations with a rigid, autocratic local regime with a dubious human rights record.

Matthew Macfayden plays POD – nicknamed the 'Prince of Darkness' – British Ambassador Keith Davis’s (played by David Mitchell) superior at the Foreign Office in London.  Matthew is listed as part of the ensemble cast rather than a guest star.

Ambassadors begins on BBC Two at 9 pm on 23rd October.  For more information on the first episode you can visit this link.

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