Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't put your daughter on the stage!, 25 Sep 2003
This is an awesome, realistic and more than somewhat frightening view of what it is like to be a professional actor in the Broadway theatre. If Mrs. Worthington’s daughter came to me, I would make her listen to Noel Coward’s song and read this well-written and heartfelt account. In this case, Jarvis has great talent as an actor, but still suffers the slings, arrows and indignities - just as thespians were treated in Shakespeare's time. The disappointments, the anger, the demanding work, the insecurities, the lounge lizards, the lies, the exaggerations, the dreams, the incompetence, the false promises, the bonds that are forged, the patience of loved ones, the boredom of tryout cities are all here. And it isn't just actors who suffer. A final word on the production by librettist/director Alan Ayckbourn as the show is being sunk despite good notices and standing ovations is to cry for.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absolutely gripping, 4 Oct 2003
By turns brilliantly funny and strangely moving, this diary account of Martin Jarvis' theatrical 'adventure' is enthralling stuff. It manages to conjure both the heady camaraderie of a theatre troupe working on a production of which they're proud, and their frustration and despair as it suffers due to insensitivity, cowardice, and sheer bad luck. Martin Jarvis writes his experiences with a pace that is more suggestive of an exciting thriller than a theatrical memoir: *will* By Jeeves make it to Broadway - and, if it does, can it survive the cutthroat politics that threaten to take it off? There are many many books written about acting and the theatre, but very few that have the wit, intelligence or *soul* of this one.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Broadway...but only just, Jeeves..., 4 Mar 2009
Martin Jarvis's diary of the theatrical tour of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Alan Aykbourn musical, By Jeeves, then the off-on worry of reaching Broadway, is a real must-read for anyone remotely interested in the theatre. His anecdotes are often enlightening, and rarely less than extremely funny - though he comes across as human, fallable, and with the same worries and hopes as any working actor. The portraits he paints of his fellow actors are spot on, and wonderfully warm on a human level.
I got the feeling that Mr Jarvis was trying very hard to stop himself saying what he really thought about Andrew Lloyd Webber, and the fact that he didn't would be my only criticism of the book. Then, who knows, what he really thought might have been professional suicide...
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by Sebastian Faulks
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