Writer: Michael Frayn
Director: Paul Robinson
It’s not often these days you come across a play with two intervals, but Noises Off is a special case: there is a considerable set change before and after Act 2 and, more particularly, each act runs through the same story – more or less, with comic additions – and subtractions through failures of memory. For those who have not seen this much-performed play a theatre company is preparing to perform a new play, a sex comedy entitled Nothing On. Act 1 is the chaotic dress rehearsal or Tech (no one seems quite sure which); Act 2 depicts that same act from backstage a month into the tour; Act 3 is the final collapse on the last night.
If Noises Off is much-performed, it’s certainly not in the form of Paul Robinson’s remarkably accomplished production – for this is the first time the play has been staged in the round. It suggests that there are no limits to what can be staged in this way: if the farce of doors, pratfalls, (dis)appearing props and sudden arrivals can triumph in this setting, anything can!
Noises Off has been described as the funniest play ever written, but 40 years on this seems a bit much, though the constant stream of international productions seems to remove all doubts. For a start we have to accept that the company is staging an absolutely dreadful play – possibly more likely in 1982! A bumbling cleaning lady has typical misadventures with a telephone and (less typical) with several plates of sardines while adventures go on around her. The Brents (owners of the property) are in Marbella to avoid tax, so a young man from the estate agent’s decides to bring his latest flame in for a bit of fun in “his” house. The Brents return, a burglar drops in, and a sheikh appears for a meeting, oddly played by the same actor as Philip Brent, and chaos ensues, added to by forgotten lines, romantic entanglements and the periodic disappearance of the burglar in pursuit of alcohol.
Kevin Jenkins’ set(s) is/are superb, with a staircase leading to three doors and confusion, and Robinson’s direction is pin-sharp, with what he rightly calls his “absolutely cracking cast of fine actors with real comedy skills” working hard to hammer home the farcical elements with immense skill in falls (including one memorable one the full length of the staircase) and the effects of clouts to the head, trousers round ankles, etc.
The play begins with Susan Twist memorably anticipating Mrs Overall in the role of Dotty Otley playing Mrs Clackett to the accompaniment of the booming tones from the back of the stalls of Adam Astill as the director Lloyd Dallas who really shouldn’t be there in Acts 2 and 3, but abandons his rehearsals for Richard III to check out his current squeeze (or two). Among an excellent cast of eight it’s nice to see Scarborough veteran Christopher Godwin as Selsdon Mowbray playing the bewildered alcoholic burglar.
The result is wonderfully inventive, if a touch exhausting!
Runs until 6 September 2025
