Mark Richard’s Bertie narrates the folderol, mixing arrogant incompetence with spontaneous befuddlement, while Kenneth Northcott’s deadpan-dry, silky-smooth Jeeves waxes wise just by raising an eyebrow. City Lit’s impeccable English accents, stopwatch timing, and inspired mugging give Wodehouse’s antics enough dithering precision to turn them wacky. Mark Hardiman’s cartoony staging takes its cue from Mark Netherland’s backdrop: goofily enlarged pages from the novel. Cunningly Wodehouse links this unassuming piece of silver to the unstable fortunes of such eccentrics as the goggle-eyed newt fancier Augustus Fink-Nottle, his flamboyantly romantic fiancee Madeline Bassett, Bertie’s dragon-lady aunt, and a fascist thug named Roderick Spode, leader of the Black Shorts. For many reasons–revenge, marriage, spite–nearly everyone Bertie knows is trying to blackmail him into stealing the antique. The dippy, at times plodding plot revolves around a silver 18th-century cow-shaped creamer. With quivering upper lip and the desperation of a cornered twit, Bertie Wooster is again embroiled in sticky scrapes from which only Jeeves, his ineffably ept valet, can extricate him. Wodehouse’s sequel to Right Ho, Jeeves, the theater’s 1993 holiday hit. Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & RecreationīERTIE & JEEVES AND THE CODE OF THE WOOSTERS, City Lit Theater Company, at the Chicago Cultural Center.Best of Chicago 2022: Music & Nightlife.

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The code of the woosters review