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Can - or should - comedy play a role in times of political extremes and cruelty?

In late May 1940, author PG Wodehouse was interned by the Nazis. During that time, he made a series of radio broadcasts that caused intense debate about patriotism and when humour is or is not appropriate. The broadcasts were essentially humorous monologues about his time as prisoner, combined with subtle mocking of his captors. However, the simple fact of the broadcasts and certain phrases from them, along with his apparent reluctance to denounce his German captors, led to hostile accusations that he was a traitor, a quisling, or worse - a man with fascist sympathies who had sold out his country to gain early release.

Wodehouse was never entirely forgiven. Despite his enormous fame and popularity, it took until the eve of his death for him to be knighted.

Taking this lesser-known incident as its central theme, Plum in Prison considers responsibility, judgment, and choices in bad times, offering a defence of laughter, comedy and joy even in our darkest hours. Stephen Mangan plays PG Wodehouse aka Plum.

In fact, despite his usual sang froid, Wodehouse had a grim internment, moved from place to place with little warning, sleeping four to a room, unable to communicate with friends and family. The Germans read Wodehouse’s novels as anti-English satires and hoped that Wodehouse would make this explicit in his broadcasts - he did not. Those broadcasts found ways of mocking his captors and maintaining what Wodehouse always championed - a very English unflappability. These were comic monologues, the most serious thing about them was their refusal to take things seriously.

Behind the scenes, he organised, through his publishers, ways of letting his fellow captives’ families know that their loved ones were safe and arranged payments to support them.

Plum in Prison fuses serious material with ever surreal comedy. Mistaken identities, miscommunications, misunderstandings piling on misunderstandings, start to infect the rigid German prison system – the whole thing becoming a complicated tangle for Plum, from which he can surely only be rescued by ... Jeeves?

Even so, farce is juxtaposed with the seriousness of the stakes, the evolving horror of the war, the very real risks to Wodehouse and other internees, the madness engulfing Europe and, behind even that, the hideous rumblings of a yet more grotesque plan to rid Europe of Germany’s enemies.

Who dares laugh at such a time? But what might laughter do? Does the horror kill the laughter? Does the laughter mask the horror? Or could the laughter help us see the horror?

What the dispute about Wodehouse reveals – underneath criticisms of his actions – is a deep-seated refusal to accept the seriousness of comedy. Wodehouse’s brio, his flippancy, his wit, enraged people to the very same extent that he had previously entertained them.

Plum ….. Stephen Mangan
Bunny ….. Clare Lawrence Moody
Meadowes and McKenzie ….. Harley Viveash
Spode, Schmidt and Schmidt …. Max Runham
Reeves and Webb ….. Graeme Hawley
Buchelt ….. Silas Carson

Producer: Polly Thomas
Sound Designer: Steve Brooke
Production Manager: Darren Spruce
Executive Producer: Celia de Wolf

Written by Dan Rebellato

A Thomas Carter Projects production for Â鶹Éç Radio 4

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