Noises Off

NOISES OFF by Michael Frayn
Venue: Lyric Hammersmith 1982
Director: Michael Blakemore

When Dotty Otley, a distinguished character actress, decides to finance and star in a bedroom farce she little realises the forces she is about to unleash. From the disastrous dress rehearsal and through an entire national tour, the play and real life inevitably collide. Tempers rise, relationships crumble and polished performances become a thing of the past.
Cast
NOTHING ON	NOISES OFF	Played by
Mrs Clackett	Dotty Otley	Patricia Routledge
Roger Tramplemain	Garry Lejeune	Nicky Henson
Vicki	Brooke Ashton	Rowena Roberts
Philip Brent	Frederick Fellowes	Tony Matthews
Flavia Brent	Belinda Blair	Jan Waters
Burglar	Selsdon Mowbray	Michael Aldridge
	Lloyd Dallas Director	Paul Eddington
	Tim Allgood Stage Manager	Roger Lloyd Pack
	Poppy Norton-Taylor Assistant SM	Yvonne Antrobus
	Electrician	Ray Edwards

Reviews

Michael Frayn’s Noises Off (Lyric, Hammersmith) is the sort of titillating glimpse of the real-unreal world of backstage which makes theatre buffs, critics and some theatricals feel thrillingly in the know. I laughed through two-thirds of it; the last act, like all comedy that misfires, made me want to jump out of the window. This is a farce about a touring production of a sex farce, Nothing On. Frayn audaciously – or perhaps thriftily – recycles it so we see its Act One three times; in a rehearsal, from the back-stage and front – on the end of the tour, when the actors’ confused romantic lives have begun to resemble those of the characters they are portraying.

Frayn writes not a bad sex-farce of an estate agent and his dolly bird on the lookout for a bit of afternoon delight and nearly colliding with the tax-dodging owners of a country cottage that contains no fewer than eight convenient doors. The joke is on us – an audience who wouldn’t be caught dead at a sex farce laughs its heads off at this one. My laughter finally died because Frayn fails to make his actors more than the dimmest stereotypes; though Paul Eddington’s blasé director, badly juggling two women as he badly juggles two plays, Patricia Routledge’s actress who plays the char in diabolical Cockney, and Michael Aldridge as the benevolent old lush were all amusing; director Michael Blakemore is very good on all the technical slapstick.

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One of the hazards of the theatre is a fixation with the absurd aspects of the trade itself, almost as if its practitioners feel the need to remind themselves that it is no business with which grown men and women should become involved. Michael Frayn is the latest writer to succumb to the temptation. His play Noises Off is about a company presenting a farcical romp called Nothing On on a tour of such fictitious playhouses as the Grand, Weston-Super-Mare, the Theatre Royal, Goole and the Municipal, Stockton-on-Tees, and takes us to the fringe of Ayckbourn territory in that it is a play about a play, the first act being about the dress rehearsal, the second, set a month into the tour, about the play seen from the back, and the final act, a month further on, with disintegration firmly established and the cast battling against "the show must go on" syndrome. The trouble with plays of this kind is that they are inclined to confirm the public's worst prejudices against actors, actresses and directors, giving the impression that they are effective only when they are enjoying their work, which is virtually impossible considering that for much of the time they are behaving like jealous children.

It would be untrue to say that Noises Off is not hugely enjoyable at times, especially the second act, which genuinely captures, even if it exaggerates, the backstage world which is on a completely different plane from that of the audience. In the last act Michael Frayn seems to be straying vaguely in the direction of Pirandello, as the actors vainly attempt to replace one collapsed fantasy with another, which might turn out to be just as good (or bad), given time. The play's main disadvantage, however, is that although he tries to vary his levels, the author is stuck with the one idea, the contrast between front of house and backstage. A fine cast - Paul Eddington, Patricia Routledge, Nicky Henson, Michael Aldridge, Jan Waters, Yvonne Antrobus, Roger Lloyd Pack, Tony Mathews and Rowena Roberts - and an inventive director, Michael Blakemore, cannot disguise the fact that this is a play about a type of person, not people.

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The Times: Ned Chaillet
On the production’s transfer to the Savoy, by which time the 3rd act had been partially rewritten.

Due consideration is hardly enough. It would take more than the two viewings I have had to do justice to Michael Frayn’s new play. My interim consideration can only be that it is probably the funniest play the West End has ever seen. Regular theatregoing may have given me a perverse taste for disasters, may have taught me to relish the collapse of scenery and the obvious sabotage of other performances by vindictive actors. Even so, the orchestration of disasters by Mr Frayn and his director, Michael Blakemore, is something extraordinarily funny. Without more consideration I am willing to say that it is the funniest play I have ever seen in the West End.

Among other things, the play is a catalogue of every comical mishap that can happen to a performance. The multiplied pleasures of Noises Off begin hysterically enough with dress rehearsal of a dreadful farce in Weston-Super-Mare. Clandestine affairs within the troupe, complete befuddlement over lines and movements, the popping of contact lenses and the emotional traumas of actors move it to the first chaotic conclusion. Without dropping a laugh, Mr Frayn has also managed to present the entire first act of the dreadful farce while establishing everyone on stage as a vital character.

It is hardly noticeable, but that is only exposition for what follows. In the second act, the splendidly tacky set by Michael Annals has been reversed and what is visible is the backstage view of the play during a bad matinee in Goole. Every passion, every jealousy, every bumbling well-meaning act grows to a harvest of hysteria. The play in some form is going on on the other side, but the backstage bickering has become all-out war, with weapons ranging from a cactus to an axe, shoelaces tied together and sardines.

In all the mayhem there is not a single weak performance. Paul Eddington, Patricia Routledge and Nicky Henson might be said to lead the company through its frenzies, but everyone is hot on their heels. The third act which once intentionally cooled the mirth, now, most winningly, brings it to a natural breathless halt.