The Lost Marx Brother ~or~ The Old Reliable*

Many years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was in high school, I was involved in a production of “Room Service.”  The play focuses on a band of actors trying to pull off a housing scheme for members of a production.  It is my experience that, at least in high school, the number of female actors is usually surplus to requirement.  Coupled with that is the fact that there seems to be a dearth of plays with largely female casts that do not revolve around some sort of women’s issue (for some reason, they are always dreary too, which does no one any good).  Fortunately, this sort of situation seems to be changing in the cinema, and it is only a matter of time until it trickles down to the stage (unless it has already; I live under a rock these days).

Back to high school.  The director that semester was aware of the gender imbalance and had the brilliant idea of switching the gender of the roles, meaning that the female parts far outnumbered those for males.  Although I was aware of this at the time, it was still a jolt later on to see a man play my role in the Marx Brothers film of the play.  “Room Service” was not written by any of that fabled comedy family, but it is certainly infused with their zany, madcap energy.  I felt the same zing reverberating through this month’s selection, The Old Reliable.

Wodehouse spent some time in Hollywood as a script writer.  This book, which is set in Tinsel Town and features one living and one dead silent screen queen, is sort of a Sunset Boulevard lite.  I mentioned Marx in a rambling preface because the rapid-fire lines and general sense of zaniness made me wonder if someone wearing ill-fitting clothes and chomping on a cigar was going to make an appearance.  The speed of the humor, while still very Wodehousian, had a different spin.  The most notable difference, which is why I mentioned my gender-bending high school theater, is that the title character is a woman, not a man.  While there have been a few fast-thinking female schemers in the Wodehouse universe, e.g. the sisters in French Leave, it really does feel as though Wodehouse originally wrote the part as a man and then, in a later edit, crossed him out and replaced the “he”s with “she”s.

I could make all sorts of observations, perhaps even label Plum a proto-feminist, but instead I find that my enjoyment came from this unexpected twist.  Just as you never know if the secret work in an episode of “You Bet Your Life” will be uttered, you never know what surprises lie ion store between the handsomely designed Overlook Press covers.

*Read December 2014