Event

Noises Off

Performed by some of our favorite local actors, this mad-hat play is one of the most difficult and hilarious scripts that exist. The Saturday evening shows include a delicious 3 course meal to accompany the salacious goings-on on-stage.

Each of the three acts of "Noises Off" contains a performance of the first act of a play within a play, a sex farce called 'Nothing On'. "Noises Off" mocks "Nothing On", which is the type of British farce in which young girls run about in their underwear, old men drop their trousers, and doors continually bang open and shut.

Act One is set at the technical rehearsal. It is midnight, the night before the first performance and the cast are hopelessly unready. Baffled by entrances and exits, missed cues, missed lines, and bothersome props, including several plates of sardines, they drive Lloyd, their director, into a seething rage and back.

Act Two shows a Wednesday matinée performance one month later. In this act, the play is seen from backstage, providing a view that emphasizes the deteriorating relationships between the cast. Romantic rivalries, lovers' tiffs and personal quarrels lead to offstage shenanigans, onstage bedlam and the occasional attack with a fire-ax.

In Act Three, we see a performance near the end of the ten-week run. Relationships between the cast have soured considerably, the set is breaking down and props are winding up in the wrong hands, on the floor, and unaccountably off-stage. It is not long before the plot has to be abandoned entirely and the more coherent characters are obliged to ad-lib somehow towards some sort of end.

The idea for it came in 1970, when Frayn was watching from the wings a performance of The Two of Us, a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave. He said, "It was funnier from behind than in front, and I thought that one day I must write a farce from behind." It takes its title from the theatrical stage direction indicating sounds coming from offstage.