In Michael Frayn's broad comedy Noises Off,Brian Bedford's "let-it-all-hang-out" direction turns one of the most successful laugh-getting plays about the theater into the funniest play on the topic ever. I was lucky to sit next to a sophisticated couple who told me that they have been attending Stratford theater since 1961: Neither knew this play, and they shook with laughter all through it.
The playwright provides an inner program for Robin Housemonger's "Nothing On," the god-awful farce that is being performed by the characters in Noises Off. We are supposedly seeing untalented TV actors touring bush-league resort towns in a cheesy farce. So, even before the play starts, you can giggle at such farcical program notes as, "Recently he made his `big screen' debut in `Up the Virgin Soldiers.'"
Act 1 introduces the characters: Dotty Otley -- longtime TV sitcom star and sometime stage actress, at least in Australia; Garry LeJeune -- dim-witted, young handsome actor having a fling with Dotty; Lloyd Dallas -- the frazzled director who is sure that he is too good for this assignment; Brooke Ashton -- stereotypical "dumb blonde" who is having a thing with director Lloyd; Poppy Norton-Taylor -- stage manager and all-purpose handy girl secretly pregnant by director Lloyd; Frederick Fellowes -- nervous, insecure actor; Belinda Blair -- glamorous actress in comic roles after an injury stopped her real talent as a dancer; Tim Allgood -- hapless techie and gofor; and Selsdon Mowbray -- hard-of-hearing old character actor, undependable when drunk.
We see this company in Nothing On from three perspectives, starting with a disastrous rehearsal in Act 1. Act 2 takes place backstage as we watch the performers' personal conflicts while different disasters are happening onstage during a performance. Act 3 lets us see a performance onstage when everything goes really wrong.
Seanna McKenna plays Dotty as a raunchy comedienne beset with problem props like plates of sardines. Steve Cumyn is Lloyd, whose frustrations peak when his backside is hit backstage with a cactus plant. Jean-Michel LeGal's lovelorn Garry has glorious shtick showing jealous fury with an axe. His victim, Steven Sutcliffe's Frederick, innocently gets into the most obscene-looking groupings with Dotty, then has nervous nosebleeds at any sign of violence. Chick Reed can look dazedly funny even when her Belinda is the only sensible one onstage. Jacob James' Tim, the sad factotum and fixer, is a whiz at most of the show's prop-jokes. Sara Topham can be as comical as sexy when semi-nude. Sophie Goulet's Poppy is riotous just making announcements on the mike. And Barry MacGregor is not only a parody ham actor vocally as Selsdon, but an absolute master at slapstick and comic poses.
Space permits only a kudo for all creators of design, sound, movement, music and fights. This is low comedy as high art.
