Beyond a Joke is
based on files released by MI5 last year which
revealed that PG Wodehouse was almost prosecuted for
treason by the British Government at the end of the
Second World War. It focuses on radio
broadcasts Wodehouse made in 1941 that made light of
the Nazi regime and appeared to describe German
soldiers in friendly tones. Wodehouse had been living
in Le Touquet in Northern France when the Germans
captured the town and took him to an internment camp
as a prisoner of war. Realising that they
could make use of him, the Germans released him soon
after with the proviso that he made some light-hearted
broadcasts to the Americans - who at that time were
not involved in the war - stating that he had not
suffered under the Nazi regime.
Although Wodehouse said at the time that he agreed
to this plan in order to reassure droves of American
fans who had written to him about their concern over
his well-being, tapes of the broadcasts were then sent
by Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry to the BBC to be
released to a UK audience. They were never
broadcast in Britain but the very existence of
Wodehouse's recordings - and the fact that he was
paid, albeit only £20, for making them - caused a
furore in the British press and accusations that the
writer was a traitor and Nazi sympathiser. Wodehouse,
his formidable wife Ethel (played by Angela Thorne),
and their Pekinese dog Wonder caused further
irritation by moving from Le Touquet to live
luxuriously in the Hotel Bristol in Paris, enjoying
cocktails and eclairs, oblivious to the privations of
war elsewhere.
The play, which was written by Roger Milner, is set
in 1944 at the start of the Government's investigation
into Wodehouse's relationship with the Nazis. Malcolm
Muggeridge, who was then a major in the British
Intelligence Corps, and Major Cussen from MI5 were
both sent to Paris to cross-examine Wodehouse and
concluded that he was naive but not a traitor. Duff
Cooper, then British Ambassador to Paris, took a less
indulgent view and it is the passages of the play
recounting the conversation between Cooper, played by
Michael Cochrane, and Wodehouse (Anton Rodgers) that
are likely to perturb the writer's fans the most. At
one stage Cooper shouts to Wodehouse: "The fact is
Wodehouse that you lived quite happily in Le Touquet
with the Germans. You didn't hear the cries of the men
at Dunkirk a mile or two away - the dive bombers . No,
you wanted to save your own skin." In the play, Cooper
goes on to call Wodehouse "scum" and suggests that the
Government should "get rid" of him.
Michael Whitehall, who is producing the play, said
he did not think Beyond
a Joke would discredit the creator of the
irredeemably dim Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, his
effortlessly superior butler. He said: "This is just
about a very interesting part of PG Wodehouse's life.
A lot of people who know his books wouldn't be aware
of this darker side to his past. He may
have been an innocent but the fact is that there were
still people dying around the time he gave the
broadcasts. The Battle of Arnhem was going on and
thousands of people were being killed and he was
living in this fantasy world. I think he was very
naive but I don't think that degree of naivety can be
entirely blameless. This play has been
researched in great depth - it isn't a hatchet job."