Successfully depicting the descent of an already awful farce into hopeless chaos requires precision engineering. Directed by Mark Rhea, Keegan Theatre’s production of Noises Off, Michael Frayn’s classic farce, nails the details and the timing. Hilarity ensues.
In Act One, Nothing On’s director, Lloyd (Jared H. Graham), fights a desperate battle to pull together the show’s final dress rehearsal. The odds are against him, given a cast that would test the sanity of any director.
Frayn has said that the inspiration for Noises Off was his experience of watching one of his earlier plays from backstage. And so, after the set rotates on Keegan’s new turntable during the first intermission, we see the second act from backstage. The set, designed by Matthew J. Keenan, is delightful front and back, including the 10 doors — somewhat above average even for a farce — that feature prominently in the actors’ comings and goings.
It is in this backstage setting that Noises Off hits its peak. A month into Nothing On’s tour, things have deteriorated. The actors and harried stage manager Tim Allgood (Gary DuBreuil) scurry to prevent utter disaster on stage while averting mayhem offstage. They talk or quarrel with one another in pantomime while managing intricate choreography with props. A slapstick ballet with a fire ax stands out, but flowers, bottles of booze, the ever-present sardines, and a cactus have their turns as well. Cindy Landrum Jacobs’ prop design is another virtue of the production.
By the time we reach the third act, at the end of Nothing On’s 12-week tour through obscure venues, matters have reached their nadir. Relationships are in tatters; the actors’ lines, entrances, and exits bear at best a tangential relationship to the original script; no one knows quite where they’re going; props are mislaid or (in the case of an unusually long telephone cord) hopelessly tangled; and everyone has reached the point of exhaustion. All that remains is to bring a final curtain down on the whole weary affair.
When I first saw Noises Off some decades ago, it struck me as the most roll-in-the-aisles funny play I had ever seen. While generating plenty of well-earned laughs, more recent viewings haven’t felt quite as uproarious to me. That’s no criticism of this production, which Keegan pulls off with panache. In particular, the second act is as virtuosic an example of ensemble playing and brilliantly on-point timing as I can imagine.
I think it fair to give the playwright a final word on his view of the world of Noises Off. Writing in 1985, Frayn said, “The fear that haunts [the actors] is that the unlearned and unrehearsed — the great chaos behind the set, inside the heart and brain — will seep back on the stage. The prepared words will vanish; the planned responses will be inappropriate. Their performance will break down and they will be left in front of us, naked and ashamed.” It is what makes Noises Off terrifyingly funny.
