“Margaret Raether’s droll adaptation is as dry as a well-made martini and equally potent,” praised
The Daily Herald. “If any comedy is worth braving subzero temperatures, it is First Folio Shakespeare Festival’s sparkling Jeeves Intervenes.”

Last season’s smash comedy at Artists’ Ensemble made its Chicago debut on February 2 and is a hit all over again. Margaret Raether’s original script debuted at AE as Jeeves & The Greensleeves Disaster. “Allison Vesely, the artistic director of First Folio, requested a script last summer,“ Margaret reports. “She read it, liked it, and asked if I would be willing to alter the title and omit the holiday references. I made the revisions and they added it to their season.”

Critical reaction has been ecstatic, “Margaret Raether’s crisp adaptation of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves Intervenes is a master work of drawing room comedy,” trumpeted one reviewer, while another praised the comedy which “should delight those with a fondness for lighthearted literary wit.” 

“I’m absolutely giddy with delight,” glows Margaret, “This play was a labor of love and I am so happy to see it produced again. In fact, I just received another request for the script from a theater in Milwaukee.”

Due to high ticket demand, First Folio has added performances to the run of Jeeves Intervenes and the production has been recommended by judges of the Joseph Jefferson Awards. 

One of the cast members from AE’s premiere production, Lydia Berger, is repeating her role as Gertrude Winklesworth-Bode, better known as “Gert the Flirt.” Two other actors in the cast also have ties to AE. Christian Gray, who plays Bertie, played Dracula in AE’s production of Laughing Stock and Kevin McKillip, who plays Bertie’s dim-witted pal, Eustace Bassington-Bassington, appeared as Nick in AE’s acclaimed production of Over the River and Through the Woods. Jeeves Intervenes is the tenth play written by Margaret Raether and no one is more surprised than she. It all came about rather by accident. “I was living in New York and started writing sketch material for a group of friends that performed regularly at the Westbeth Theatre Center in the Village,” she recalls. A producer saw her work and an evening of the best sketches was later produced at the Midtown Arts Common and again at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors summer arts festival.

Margaret spent two years as playwright-in-residence at New American Theater where many of her plays debuted, including comic mysteries such as Murder Howls at Midnight and Dying for Attention, and her adaptations of A Christmas Carol and The Three Musketeers. “I am strongly driven to write comedy,” insists Margaret. “This world could always use a bit more humor.”

Adapting a play from one of the earliest P.G. Wodehouse stories, “Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg” was an idea that held enormous appeal for Margaret as she is a long-time fan of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves. Paraphrasing Wodehouse himself, Margaret says that she mostly sat at the keyboard and “cursed a bit.” The completed comedy debuted at Artists’ Ensemble Theater in December 2006. Victor Yehling called it a “delightful script of convolution and confusion” in the Rockford Register Star and Edith McCauley’s review in the Rock River Times said, “Raether’s play beautifully brings to the stage two of Wodehouse’s funniest characters.”

Margaret is hard at work on a new play for Artists’ Ensemble Theater, where she is one of the founding ensemble members. “With response like this, one can’t help wanting to jump right back in and crank out another play,” she laughs.

Jeeves Intervenes continues its run at First Folio through March 2. Tickets are $26, $21 for students and senior. Tickets are available online at www.firstfolio.org or by calling 630-986-8067.

Artists’ Ensemble is an Equity theater currently performing its fourth season of professional theater in residence at Rockford College. AE’s upcoming production of the Pulitzer Prize winning play, Rabbit Hole, opens March 21.

For further information contact: Margaret Raether, Playwright Artistic Director, Artists’ Ensemble Theater at (815) 540-4804.