Noises Off
It feels funny calling Noises Off!a sturdy, reliable comedy — perhaps even misleading. “Sturdy” and “reliable” are words not usually associated with “meta,” “madcap,” and “naughty.” And yet. Theater lovers have been grooving to theater about theater since forever. The play’s the thing! Here, we have a backstage comedy that spends its second act literally backstage (and its first act in a dress rehearsal that should have been the technical, but they ran out of time). A sturdy, reliable format — sturdier than the set, anyway, which breaks down in spectacular fashion at more than one point in the proceedings.
And that brings us to “madcap.” Michael Frayn’s play is about an English company preparing a farce for its tour of the sticks. The farce makes nearly constant use of doors — so many entrances coinciding so neatly with so many exits! — while the play employs nearly every other trick in the physical comedy book: falls, fights, faints, drunks, dodges, depantsings, the loss of a hairpiece, the loss of a contact, the loss of an actor, and oh yes, innocent activities that are mistaken for rather less innocent sexual encounters.
And here we are at “naughty.” One character spends most of the show in lingerie and heels, but she also spends too much time posing and gazing eagerly out into the audience she hopes to charm to mix it up too much with any of the characters onstage. It’s not entirely clear whether this is what the farce calls for or just what the actress in the play has to offer — as opposed to the actual, you know, actress in Noises Off!, and back to meta we go! But she is at least the recipient of some gentle double entendres in the first first act.
Because, you see, there are three first acts, or rather, the same first act three times: the dress rehearsal, when things are funny in a gentle “oh, this is going to be a disastrous opening night” sort of way; four weeks in, when things are funny in a “wheels are come off the bus, but the show must go on” sort of way; and then eight weeks after that, in a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” sort of way. By the end, the absurdity is verging on surreality, and it’s only because of the aforementioned sturdiness and reliability that it all works as well as it does. If it were less expertly conceived, less seamlessly joined, less professionally performed, it would be a chore instead of a delight. Even as it is, you will surely tire of sardines by show’s end. You may even be maddened by the mere mention of sardines. But then, that’s the point.
When
Ongoing until Sunday, August 10, 2025
Hours
| Sundays, 2pm |
| Fridays, 7:30pm |
| Saturdays, 7:30pm |