Perfect Nonsense

Perfect Nonsense: another stage door photo with Matthew Macfadyen

Matthew Macfadyen stage door on opening night 

Perfect Nonsense : Rehearsal Photo from Programme

One of the many new photos in the programme

Perfect Nonsense: meeting Matthew Macfadyen

There were six of us Darcylician's shivering at the stage door for Matthew Macfadyen to leave.  We saw the wonderful  Stephen Mangan leave and later return.  We all told him that the play was brilliant, which he clearly enjoyed hearing.   Later, Matthew stepped out and came towards us to chat.  He looked so thin and handsome (both onstage and off!).  We gushed about the play and his many roles.  I told him he had amazing energy on stage, at which point he drooped with fatigue, amusing us all.

While signing autographs and taking photographs, he told us we won't have long to wait for Ripper Street, and that the second series was even better than the first.  He would even be interested in a third series, if it happened. 

He isn't sure when Epic will be released.  A Miracle may begin filming at the end of next year.

His part in Ambassadors is small (filmed in a day) but he will appear in all 3 episodes.

I'm sure I have forgotten bits so please join us in the forum to read other people's impressions.  Here's a cropped photo of Matthew that I took tonight.

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.

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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