‘Noises Off’ review – Hilarious, head-in-your-hands farce

Noises Off, Michael Frayn’s farce about a touring theatre company’s disastrous attempts to put on a show is, itself, on tour at the moment, though it isn’t stopping off at any of the UK towns mentioned in the show. While I can’t help but feel like Luxembourg audiences won’t be all that familiar with the pleasures of Stockton-on-Tees (the name-dropping doesn’t really get a laugh at the Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch), all audience members will be able to connect to the universal and accessible nature of a melodrama.

Frayn’s script is intriguing in that there’s both a story which happens on-stage and one which happens off it.

The play within the play – Nothing On – concerns a housekeeper wanting to sit down and relax with some sardines; an estate agent showing a young woman around the house; the owners of the property coming back and worrying about inland revenue; and a burglar unceremoniously breaking in to steal things.

Meanwhile, Noises Off is about the doomed company trying to put on that performance. There’s the exasperated director Lloyd (Harry Long), who’s in a love triangle with assistant stage manager Poppy (Gemma Salter) and over-actor Brooke (Aisla Joy); overwhelmed stage manager Tim (Ezra Alexander); Frederick (Hisham Abdel Razek), whose aversion to blood and violence causes him to faint; Garry, whose sentences trail off and are left incomplete; gossiper Belinda (Clare-Louise English), who’s trying to keep everything together; Selsdon (Russell Richardson), an actor with a drinking problem; and Dotty (Hilary Maclean), who’s dating Garry.

If that sounds like a lot to take in, it is.

The show spends the first act establishing key information about Nothing On and the actors, and it takes a considerable amount of time to get into the farce of the play-within-a-play, given it soon gets stuck in a repetitive motion of the very last rehearsal before first preview being paused due to an particular actor’s issue or mistake, with Lloyd yelling feedback from the very back of the audience, before walking onto the stage to resolve the problem and then retreating back into the upper stalls.

The constant stop-start and cyclical nature of the act delays our understanding of what Nothing On is about and the establishment of expectations, which are, of course, essential to the play’s comedy. Similarly, with the set requiring multiple doors for the many characters to go in and out of, and the audience needing to focus and remember every development, it becomes impossible to recall exactly who is behind each door, or where we should be directing our attention. The surprise that comes from jogging our memory when a character emerges from a room somewhat makes up for this slip in actual director Douglas Rintoul’s direction, but it’s baffling in a way which is more disorientating than anything else.

It is, however, both a clever and amusing aspect of Frayn’s script, and a celebration of theatre itself, that Lloyd’s advice to the ill-fated performers about facial expressions and West End actors making up lines or ad-libbing in the first act are realised in the second and third acts respectively. When the set is flipped to show us what is happening during its opening performance, the actors are forced to vent their frustrations largely through mime and gesticulations so as to not disturb the show going on upstage. When things are flipped back for the third and final act, this time with the benefit of knowing what should be going on in Nothing On thanks to the first act, we watch as Dotty gives up on adhering to the script when props are misplaced, changing the flow of the story altogether and providing a new way to catch the audience off-guard. It’s just as fun noticing how the Brooke’s dramatic overacting in the first act transitions into a more flat and disinterested performance after the fallout surrounding the love triangle.

There will, inevitably, be theatregoers who will compare this 1982 play to its modern successor, The Play That Goes Wrong (and other shows from Mischief Theatre under the ‘Goes Wrong’ umbrella), but they are different beasts with their own similarities and distinctions. Yes, there’s the same incompetent stage manager and an offstage romance, but while The Play That Goes Wrong successfully finds comedy in the chaos and bewilderment, this production of Noises Off doesn’t quite manage it (perhaps because of the aforementioned issues in the first act), and is instead focused on pushing the farce to breaking point, where you’re left wondering what needs to happen before they all decide the show is beyond salvation. It’s a diabolical disaster of a show – and that’s a compliment!

Noises Off is now playing at the Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch until 7 June. It will then run at Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg from 13 to 15 June, before transferring to Theatre by the Lake in Keswick, Cumbria from 25 June to 26 July, where its tour concludes.

Audio description is available for all performances.

British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation will be provided on 7 June (Hornchurch) and 12 July (Theatre by the Lake).

The show will be relaxed on 10 July and captioned on 12 July – both will take place at Theatre by the Lake, Keswick.

To read more of Liam’s reviews.

Production images: Craig Fuller Photography.

Disclaimer: I was invited to watch Noises Off for free in exchange for a review of the performance as a member of the press. While I know Clare-Louise English in a personal capacity, all opinions expressed above are honest and my own.