The Show Must Go On! to stream Andrew Lloyd Webber's By Jeeves

The 1996 musical can be streamed from this Friday, May 8 at 2pm (ET) for free.

Following the previous weeks' streamings of Andrew Lloyd Webber productions on The Show Must Go On! YouTube Channel, including Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies, and Andrew Lloyd Webber: The Royal Albert Hall Celebration, this weekend's release has now be revealed.

The 1996 musical By Jeeves (filmed in 2001) will be made available for free from this Friday, May 8 from 2pm (ET) for a limited 48-hour period.

Synopsis: "By Jeeves is the musical comedy by Alan Ayckbourn and Andrew Lloyd Webber based on the characters of P.G. Woodhouse. An adventure of the hapless Bertie Wooster (played by John Scherer), a young gentleman about town with a penchant for getting himself into personal difficulties, particularly with women. It is inevitably left to his unflappable manservant Jeeves (played by Martin Jarvis) to provide tify and elegant rescues. Enjoy this outrageous comedy as Jeeves guides Bertie through a series of hapless adventures and improvised chaos. A show that has to be seen to be believed!"

The musical first premiered under the name of Jeeves at Her Majesty's Theatre in London's West End (following tryouts in Bristol) in 1975, but received poor reviews and closed after just over a month of performances. However, Ayckbourn and Webber would revisit the material two decades later and a heavily revised version (now called By Jeeves) was staged in 1996 in Scarborough, garnering much more favorable reviews. This production would open in the West End at the Duke of York's Theatre for a limited 12-week engagement that same year, but was extended due to popular demand, moving to the Lyric Theatre, playing through February 1997 and earning three Olivier Award nominations.

Following a US premiere at Goodspeed in November 1996, a 1997 production at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, and a pre-Broadway tryout in Pittsburgh in February 2001, By Jeeves finally opened on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theatre in October 2001.

This filmed version was recorded between the Pittsburgh production and the Broadway premiere at a studio in Toronto, directed by Nick Morris and Ayckbourn himself with choreography by Sheila Carter. The cast includes John Scherer (as Bertie Wooster) and Martin Jarvis (as Jeeves), alongside Donna Lynne Champlin (as Donna Lynne Champlin), Don Stephenson (as Bingo Little), James Kall (as Gussie Fink-Nottle), Heath Lamberts (as Sir Watkyn Bassett), Becky Watson (as Madeline Bassett), Emily Loesser (as Stiffy Byng), Ian Knauer (as Harold "Stinker" Pinker), and Steve Wilson (as Cyrus Budge III, Junior).

Here's a little teaser ahead of this weekend's free streaming...

^{(Photo courtesy of ThinkJam)}