You
quite often read in reviews that such-and-such an actor starts at too
high a pitch, leaving their performance nowhere to go. In Michael
Frayn’s classic 1982 farce, events in general begin at an implausibly
high pitch, but then proceed to fire up their jetpack. Whereas most
farces begin with a more or less reasonable situation and escalate
matters to a peak of absurdity,
Noises Off is already at full farce intensity more or less from the word go.
For it is, of course, a farce
about
farce, beginning at the technical rehearsal of a dreadful theatrical
romp, introducing the various quirks of cast, director and stage
managers even as we watch a jerky, unsatisfactory hobble through the
first act of the fictional
Nothing On.
This Act One is followed by, er, Act One, a month or so later on tour,
with assorted intrigues leading to bad blood amongst the company;
finally, Act One, at the end of the tour, a complete shambles in which
all concerned simply want to get the whole thing over with. In each
case, the same basic script is performed, but with more and more
cock-ups.
The second act (that is, the
second Act One) is the real delight, since the set is reversed and what
we principally see is the backstage pandemonium, with muffled lines and
an occasional glimpse through the set window of the proceedings
“onstage”. Designer Peter McKintosh cheats the sightlines in this act:
in reality, an audience in the supposed Theatre Royal,
Ashton-under-Lyne, would also see utter chaos back through the same
window. But director Lindsay Posner choreographs his cast so
beautifully that one doesn’t care. Jamie Glover as the furiously
jealous lover, Jonathan Coy as the bumbler Glover thinks is his rival
for the ageing luvvie portrayed by Celia Imrie, Robert Glenister as the
lethally sarcastic two-timing director and Karl Johnson as the old soak
are the most frantic parties, with Janie Dee as the self-appointed
linchpin of the company. Even the SMs get some confusion of their own,
with conflicting front-of-house announcements.
Getting
a staging so comprehensively, dynamically wrong is an amazingly
intricate business, and Posner and his company pull it off with verve
and aplomb. The chap sitting behind me on press night was the most
deafening audience laugher I have ever encountered, but you really
can’t begrudge someone a good old guffaw at stuff like this.
Written for the Financial
Times.