“Highly-acclaimed homecoming for Michael Frayn’s much-loved classic comedy” is Catherine Bardrick's five-star review of 'Noises Off' now showing until August 3rd.
OUR VERDICT
'Noises Off' first premiered at the Lyric, Hammersmith in 1982 and now sees its most welcome homecoming almost forty years later back on the same stage. Frayn himself has acknowledged the return of his iconic, classic comedy as “a great pleasure for me, of course, to see my play come home, after all its travels around the world in the last 40 years, to the theatre where it took its first hopeful but still uncertain steps.” Judging by the rapturous applause greeting this latest superb production, the play is deservedly both delighting fans and being discovered by new audiences.
The sharply-written, hilarious script concerns a company of actors who are touring around the country performing a typical farce entitled “Nothing On” and the action follows the final rehearsal, then takes us backstage behind the scenes, before revealing the performance which quickly descends into an on-the-night meltdown precipitated by the messy private lives and bickering infighting of the cast. Although the play is a side-splittingly funny parody of the stereotypical farce with all the usual tropes of slapstick, doors slamming, rapid exits and entrances, trousers falling down, it also pays incredible homage to the whole theatre industry itself, or as cast member Meera Syal simply sums up “a love letter to the theatre.”
The success of performing 'Noises Off' heavily relies on technical brilliance, split-second timing, and perfect execution of pure physical comedy with no room for error in presenting everything that goes so hilariously wrong. The play makes incredible ( often nigh-on impossible) demands of its cast and every actor on stage relished the challenge without exception seamlessly knitting together as a highly-polished team all delivering high-octane performances - whether it is Meera Syal juggling plates of sardines as garrulous housekeeper Dotty Otley, Simon Rouse bursting through the window as hapless burglar Selsdon Mowbray, or Daniel Rigby bouncing off the walls as he falls down the stairs as jilted Garry Lejeune. Such knockabout slapstick of the company is then gloriously undermined by the performance of Lloyd Owen as long-suffering, cynical director Lloyd Dallas.
Full credit must therefore be given to those responsible for the finely-timed on-stage choreography which is pure poetry in motion perhaps best exemplified by the scene in which the theatrical props of a bunch of flowers, a bottle of whiskey, and a blood-stained axe whizz around the stage from actor to actor at an alarming speed causing the audience to gasp with unadulterated appreciation of the skill involved. Joyce Henderson is responsible for Movement and Rachel Bown-Williams and Ruth Cooper-Brown for Fights, and overall the production is both tightly and skilfully directed by Jeremy Herrin.
If you are looking for a highly-entertaining night out at the theatre, then this production is, without doubt, an unmissable crowd-pleaser – clever, creative and classic comedy at its very best!