Last Updated on December 12, 2024
Britain’s favourite farce strikes again!
Should you ever go and see the same play twice? Given the regular productions of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, London’s theatre-going crowd is probably being kept awake at night, to-ing and fro-ing over this exact question. Will it disappoint? Will it be as good as I remember it? The answer, of course, is that it’ll never live up to your first watch, but I promise, this 40th-anniversary production will not disappoint. It would take a complete misanthrope to scoff at this well-executed classic.
Frayn wrote Noises Off after having watched Richard Briers and Lynn Redgrave perform his first series of plays The Two of Us, at the Garrick Theatre. Watching from the wings Frayn thought the backstage antics were funnier than the play itself, and so his play within a play began to take shape. By 1982, Noises Off was premiering at The Lyric and was about to become a staple British farce to be acclaimed by audiences and critics alike.
Frayn’s play follows a theatre company rehearsing Nothing On at the Weston Super Mare Theatre, a convoluted sex farce by the fictitious writer Robin Housemonger. Act One opens on the show’s dress rehearsal, where the actors muddle their way through the agonising writing, confusing stage directions, and the growing derision of director Lloyd Dallas (Alexander Hanson). Hanson does well to capture Lloyd’s snobbery, but alongside some brilliantly energetic performances, particularly from Joseph Millson as Garry, and Tracy-Ann Oberman as Belinda, he didn’t quite strike the right chord. Still, his constant exasperation was a delightful comeuppance for his two-timing relationships with younger cast members.
Act Two of Noises Off is possibly both one of the most densely choreographed scenes in British theatre, and one of the funniest things I have ever seen. The play leaps forward to a matinee performance, but the stage is flipped, and the audience is treated to the silenced shenanigans backstage. Here, the audience’s new-found familiarity with Nothing On forms the backdrop to the actor’s own personal drama. Classic gags are timed perfectly to create a seamless mess of comedy, bottles of whiskey are hidden, fire axes are brandished, shoelaces are tied, contact lenses are lost, and perhaps best of all, cactuses are sat on. Here, the company chemistry shines at its brightest, and no matter how many times you’ve seen this scene, it’ll still leave you rolling in the stalls.
By the time we get to Act Three, when the cast is three months into the run, they’re bruised, exhausted, and verging on lunacy. Felicity Kendal’s brilliant rendition of Dotty excels here and her charm and confusion are combined brilliantly, as she loses yet more plates of sardines. Sasha Frost excels here too, as the naïve and slightly thick Brooke, who fails to adapt to any clear anomalies, and blindly says her lines regardless of whether they make any sense. The cast scrambles to recover, but both this Act and Noises Off ends with three burglars, a technical malfunction and the tearing down of the fire curtain. In other words, blissful disarray.
The joy of Noises Off, in comparison to other plays of its ilk, is its sheer wittiness, and what has proved to be its timeless commentary on the awful hilarity of the theatrical world. Unlike other British comedy classics, like Connie Booth and John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers, Noises Off, for the most part, has stood the test of time. Save for the dodgy impersonation of an Arab Sheikh, and Lloyd’s revolting behaviour with members of the production, the jokes feel just as smart as they have always been. Although perhaps endless plates of sardines should be exchanged for endless plates of avocado toast, just to keep it fresh.
How far wrong can a production of Noises Off actually go? Frayn’s stage directions are meticulously detailed, and as long as the cast is skilled enough to pull it off, the comedy mostly lies in the script. There isn’t much difference between this 40th-anniversary revival and any other Noises Off production in the last ten years – but it’s good. It’s great, actually. But I’m looking forward to the day some bright young satirist writes something just as funny, or, if the theatrical stars miraculously align, something even funnier.
Noises Off at The Phoenix Theatre:
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