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Candle-light
by Siegfried Geyer, adapted by P.G. Wodehouse
DIRECTED BY GREGORY SALATA
Friday, January 22 at 7:30
Saturday, January 23 at 2:00 and 7:30
Sunday, January 24 at 2:00
Monday, January 25 at 7:30
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| OVERVIEW |
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In his employer's absence, Josef, Prince Rudolph's valet, invites a young woman he knows only as a pretty voice on the telephone, to his masters home, and, in order to impress her, disguises himself as his employer. Wodehouse, best known for creating the characters Jeeves and Wooster, turns Geyer's play into an uproarious satire on class differences and a delightful variant on the theme of mistaken identities. This gracious 1927 comedy originally starred Leslie Howard and Gertrude Lawrence. |
| CAST/CREW |
MARK ALHADEFF+*
Prince Rudolf
RICHARD FERRONE+*
Chauffeur
AYANNA WITTER-JOHNSTON
Music by
GREGORY SALATA
Directed by
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| DRAMATURGY |
In his unbelievably prolific career, Sir Pelham Grenville (P.G.) Wodehouse wrote ninety-six books, forty-four screenplays, and hundreds of song lyrics and short stories. For comparison, he only wrote fifteen plays. It was not for lack of loving the theater, however. In his prose works, Wodehouse is especially praised for his witty and intelligent dialogue. Wodehouse was highly inspired by his early experiences with the stage, so much so that he described treating his fictional characters as if they were actors. He learned, from working with actors who refused to be upstaged by characters more minor than themselves, that one “must never, never subordinate your hero” (Wodehouse insisted this was not vanity on the part of actors, but “an instinctive knowledge of stagecraft”). Some of Wodehouse’s fame for his dry wit and comic characterization, based upon the traditional British stiff-upper lip, can be traced to his theatrical experiences, both in the theater and from observing the drama of everyday life. Candle-Light is a rare opportunity to see Wodehouse’s comic gifts jump off of a page and into the mouths of real people. It is a revelation, one that makes a viewer wish Wodehouse had found even more time to contribute to the theater.
Wodehouse was born on October 15, 1881. His father, Henry Ernest Wodehouse, was a colonial administrator in Hong Kong, leading to his absence for the majority of his son’s childhood. Wodehouse was instead raised by a small army of aunts and uncles, the experience of which inspired the madcap group of aunts that constantly make life hectic for Wodehouse’s comic icon, Bertie Wooster. When his father retired and Wodehouse’s parents returned to England in 1895, Plum (Wodehouse’s nickname) suddenly found himself with two strangers who he had to call “mother” and “father.” Wodehouse became terrified of his overbearing mother and later recalled the frantic mornings when he and his brothers would rush “to get to the only gents’ lavatory in the house before Father, as he invariably occupied it for two hours.” It was, in many ways, a relief for Wodehouse when he was able to attend Public School and live in a dormitory. He thrived away from his family, where he rose to the top of the school hierarchy, did well in athletics, and even participated in some school choirs and drama productions, despite his lack of singing ability.
Perhaps most importantly for his formative years, however, Wodehouse spent a great deal of time getting shuffled to various country houses by his aunts and uncles. It was there that he met and developed friendships with the servant-class, the butlers and maids who lived below stairs. This introduction to the ins and outs of Edwardian social life, the peculiar and rigid set of unspoken rules between servant and master, provided Wodehouse with the perfect material to satirize in his writings. It was the combination of his observations from British society and his classical studies in school, reading Greek and Latin, that gave him the content and the literary skill he needed to become a masterful writer. His subject might have been considered “light,” but his formal abilities were finely honed and sophisticated.
Wodehouse was not born a great writer. He became one through sheer hard work. While working as a bank clerk, Wodehouse went home every night and wrote stories, parodies, poems, portions of novels, and anything else that took his fancy. He wrote and submitted pieces everywhere he could, learning as he wrote and improving in skill with each piece. He was finally rewarded when several publications accepted his submissions, including the newspaper The Globe, where he worked regularly for several years, and the British satirical magazine Punch (the Onion of Edwardian England). Eventually, Wodehouse took a risk and left his job at the bank in 1902. It turned out to be a good move; his first book, The Pothunters, was published only nine days after giving up his bank clerk position.
Wodehouse’s early novels were mostly gentle satires of his school days. At the same time, he had his first professional experiences in the theater. A longtime Gilbert and Sullivan fan, the influence of which could be seen in Wodehouse’s published comic verse, he was hired to contribute lyrics to the musical Sergeant Brue in 1904. Then, in 1906, Wodehouse became a lyricist-in-residence at the Aldwych theater, teamed with noted American composer Jerome Kern (their most famous collaboration was the song “Bill,” written in 1918 but unused until Kern put it in his musical Showboat nearly ten years later). For Wodehouse, this was a dream come true – he had always loved musical theater and revered Seymour Hicks, the actor-manager who hired him at the Aldwych.
By the end of 1906, Wodehouse had proven that he could write successfully in almost every form that existed. His first major creation was the character Psmith. He became an Edwardian sensation, a stylish and fast-talking Public School graduate, prone to quoting classical texts and showing off his immense vocabulary (exaggerated to comic effect). The “P” in his names, Psmith explains, was added by himself so that he would not be just another in a long line of Smiths, and it is silent, he adds, “as in pshrimp.” Psmith would appear in four novels, and he was only overshadowed by Wodehouse’s brilliant comic team of Jeeves and Wooster. Bertie Wooster is the rich but somewhat dim-witted narrator of a series of novels and short stories. His manservant, Jeeves, does the majority of the thinking for both of them and gets them out of many difficult situations. This master-servant relationship might seem like a cliché now, but Wodehouse was the one who invented and perfected it.
Candle-Light comes right at the height of Wodehouse’s success. It is fascinating because, while it displays several typical Wodehouse elements, they are in a slightly different context. The crux of Candle-Light is the master-servant relationship between Prince Rudolf and his valet, Josef. There are two main differences, however, between Candle-Light and Wodehouse’s more famous creations. The first is that, unlike Jeeves and Wooster, Prince Rudolf and Josef are more evenly matched wits. In fact, it is Josef who begins the farcical troubles of the play, and it is left up to the prince to help sort things out. The second major difference and the play’s main point of interest to Wodehouse fans is that the play is set outside of his native land. More so than many other British writers, Wodehouse is associated closely with his home country. His principal comic skills derive from the class situation in England, and his mastery of the English language led him to pepper his prose with British slang and Public School jargon. Jeeves and Wooster are well-known for catch-phrases like ‘What, Ho!” and “pip pip!”
The fact that Wodehouse is able to write a hilarious and engaging comic farce without relying on his trademark colloquialisms allows us to see his gifts in a new way. The play was adapted from the German language Kleine Komoedie by the playwright Siegfried Geyer. Set in Vienna around the turn of the century, the play was performed in the Weimer era at the Deutsches Nationaltheater in 1927. Brought to London in a translation by Graham John, the play was first produced in English, but under the title By Candlelight. Prolific producer Gilbert Miller changed the title to Candle-Light after hiring Wodehouse for the new translation. The New York production opened in 1929 at The Empire Theatre, starring actors Reginald Owen (A Christmas Carol [1938]), Leslie Howard (Of Human Bondage, Gone With the Wind), and Gertrude Lawrence, right at the height of her career and one year prior to starring in Noel Coward’s Private Lives on the West End and Broadway. The New York Sun wrote that the Graham John translation in London, By Candlelight, was “a pretty thin affair.” Once Wodehouse got his hands on it, however, the play became something else entirely. The Sun continued that the play “gained markedly” in the overseas move, improved with “speed and emphasis” now that Gertrude Lawrence was “artfully leading the riot.” Candle-Light ran for 128 performances, praised by critics chiefly for the performances and Wodehouse’s adaptation. Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times called the acting “immaculate and lustrous” in a play “adapted superlatively” from the German original.
In his book P.G. Wodehouse & Hollywood, Brian Taves writes that Candle-Light contains little recognizable as Wodehouse. For lovers of classic Wodehouse, the absence of the Britishness can be a letdown. Taves’ analysis is also informed by the difficulties Wodehouse experienced working on the film adaptation. He labored for months on a screenplay for M.G.M., only to find the play later sold to Universal and completely re-written by others. Reginald Owen was kept from starring because his voice was called “squeaky” on screen (a dubious claim). The resulting 1933 film, By Candlelight, starring Paul Lukas as Josef and Nils Asther as the prince, was directed by James Whale (Bride of Frankenstein), a talented director serving here as a last-minute fill-in. The movie is pleasantly enjoyable, but it is not really a work by Wodehouse. In an interesting postscript, the play’s basic plot was revived once more as a Viennese opera, re-translated into English in 1938 as You Never Know, and given new music and lyrics by Cole Porter for a Broadway run.
Instead of neglecting Candle-Light because it is different from other plays by Wodehouse, it deserves to be celebrated as proof of Wodehouse’s versatility. Wodehouse would live for many more years, passing away in 1975. He suffered a devastating character assassination when he was essentially held captive during WWII, moved with his wife from Nazi-occupied France to Berlin. Tricked into writing a few humorous radio broadcasts, Wodehouse was accused of collaborating with the Germans, which could not have been further from the truth. Fortunately, his reputation has survived the incident and his works remain beloved today. Weeks before his death Wodehouse was given a knighthood. For a fan of Wodehouse, Candle-Light is a special rarity, unfairly relegated as a footnote in most biographies. For those unversed in his works, it is an immensely enjoyable introduction.
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January, 2010
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