West End favourite Perfect Nonsense heads to Hong Kong
Robert and David Goodale talk about reviving comedy show Perfect Nonsense which begins a 12-day run in Hong Kong next week
When Robert and David Goodale were invited to transform a one-hour one-man comedy show Robert had performed 20 years before at the Edinburgh Festival into a full-length play, their first reaction was: no way.
After all, David was “61-and-a-bit” (it was five years ago: he is now 66-and-three-quarters) and his younger brother was 57, and the show featured PG Wodehouse’s narrator Bertie Wooster, whom neither of them were quite of an age to play any more.
But the producer, Mark Goucher, was persuasive. Which is just as well. Because Perfect Nonsense launched straight into the West End, won a prestigious award, has been translated into several languages, has made people laugh all over the world, and looks like it might lead to a TV series spin-off.
The production is coming to town and will be staged at the Drama Theatre, Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, for a 12-day run starting on September 14.
All the best comedies have a splinter of sadness in them, and for Perfect Nonsense that is the memory of Robert’s twin brother Andy, who died 14 years ago in his late 40s.
“Andy was a complete Wodehouse fanatic who got me and David interested,” Robert says. “I’m sure he’d have been a part of it. He got the whole thing going.”