BECK CENTER IS KICKING OFF a daringly ambitious season in sneaky fashion with an area premiere of the jaunty By Jeeves, a soufflé-weight musical drawn from a series of once-popular P. G. Wodehouse comic stories and novels.

From post-WWI through the 1930s, the English-born P(elham) G(renville) Wodehouse was an immensely successful musical comedy lyricist and librettist, collaborating with such luminaries as Kern, Gershwin and Porter. What he's best remembered for, though, is his amusing chronicles of the bumbling misadventures of feckless bachelor Bertie Wooster and his ice-water-veined valet Jeeves, whose brainy improvisations and steely unflappability constantly rescue Bertie's aristocratic tail from discombobulation and disgrace.

A dryly witty, veddy British variation on the ancient wise servant-simple master model, the series lasted for a generation as a literary cult rage. In 1975, Andrew Lloyd Webber attempted a musicalization of the characters that flopped. Twenty years later, farce playwright Alan Ayckbourn revamped and revitalized the project, and, after a London stint, By Jeeves opened in 2001 for an abbreviated Broadway run.

The happiest aspect of the collaboration is that Lloyd Webber's music has little of his usual turgid, pretentious, blowsy borrowings from such betters as Puccini and Verdi. Instead, the tunes are tuneful, sprightly and suited to the low-key, lighthearted material. Likewise, Ayckbourn's book judiciously picks and chooses frivolous incidents and characters from various stories, blending them into a breezily nonsensical frolic.

The adaptation has Bertie primed to give a banjo concert for a village church benefit, when some music lover steals his instrument. Forced to ad lib, he once again calls on Jeeves, who suggests they recount the colorful string of contretemps that resulted from Bertie stealing a constable's hat and giving a false name in court. With Jeeves stage-managing, we follow along as the hapless Bertie gets entangled with his upper-class chums and chicks in multiple transferred identities, love matches and mismatches, and threats of social ostracism, until our hero generously consents to commit a sham burglary, gets caught, and requires Jeeves for one last, magical extrication.

It's a fey piece that relies on a feathery, whimsical style, which Beck's production only occasionally supplies. Don McBride's set and Jeffrey Smart's costumes, though serviceable, appear literal and flat. Beyond its two principals, the company's energetic efforts seem too often amateurishly heavy-handed. Director Michael Rogaliner hits the right note with a pair of giddy ensemble numbers, but lacks a consistently airy touch that would unify the proceedings.

Saving stabilization, however, is provided by Larry Nehring's Bertie and Dana Hart's Jeeves. The former's familiar fidgety expressiveness and naïve openness fit neatly with the character, and his pleasant baritone is well up to the show's undemanding vocal demands. In suitable contrast, Hart is as nerveless and stoic as required, while managing somehow to convey an understanding warmth beneath the valet's frozen mask. It might be a nice touch, though, for Jeeves to betray one eye-twinkle or Mona Lisa half-smile.