Photo Credit: Paul Ruffolo
(L to R) Kay Allmand as Vivienne, Chris Klopatek as Bertie, Chase Stoeger as Binky, Anna Cline as Ruby
Matt Daniels returns as Jeeves once more this spring as Milwaukee Chamber Theatre closes-out its season with Jeeves Takes a Bow. Margaret Reather’s tribute to P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories graces the main stage of the Broadway Theater Center in style.
The style of the production is sharp and clever. Ideally higher-end theatre like Milwaukee Chamber Theatre manages to feel sharp and formal without seeming stiff and uncomfortable. Milwaukee Chamber handles this with grace and form, You walk into the lobby of the Broadway Theatre Center box office, slide through the lobby and into the big stage, sink into your seat and before long there’s Producing Artistic Director C. Michael Wright introducing the show.
It’s taken me a while to realize that I would love to see Wright host a talk show of some sort. The man has a very approachable presence that is very articulate...precisely the kind of comfortable formality that is perfect for Milwaukee Chamber. Towards the end of the introduction, Matt Daniels appears onstage next to Wright fully poised in the role of Jeeves. From outside to box office to lobby to theater to Producing Artistic Director to title character in one smooth motion. Precisely the sort of thing that makes Jeeves so distinctive. The fluidity of the experience matches the style and grace of the title character and Matt Daniels in it.
The comedy is set in an upscale luxury apartment in New York in 1932. Scenic Designer Rick Rasmussen has composed a very cozy immensity for the location where all the action takes place. It feels spacious without feeling vacuous and sterile the way this sort of set can often look onstage. There’s a warmth to it that makes for a really nice backdrop to all the comedy. There are just enough corners and curtains and obstructions to allow for visual a variety of different visual gags that occasionally accent the production.
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The apartment in question belongs to the occupationally averse Bertie Wooster, who finds his leisure bringing him here across the Atlantic with his perspicacious handler Jeeves. Chris Klopatek, who continues to bring a suitably comic sense of avoidance in the role. When an old friend of Bertie’s (played by Chase Stoeger) shows up at the apartment pretending to be him, things get suitably complicated and only Jeeves seems to know the proper way out of the predicament.
As directed by Tami Workentin, the production has a clean, dynamic feel about it. Daniels is as sharp as ever in the role of Jeeves. Stoeger tumbles around with irresistibly comic distress. Steven M. Koehler makes a pleasantly gruff appearance as a bootlegger. Anna Cline has a street-level classiness about her as a talented stage actress mixed-up with the rest of the cast. Everything is juggled quite effervescently from beginning to end in another success for Milwaukee Chamber Theatre.
Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s production of Jeeves Takes a Bow runs through May 3 at the Broadway Theatre Center. For ticket reservations, call 414-291-7800.
