Noises Off
by Michael Frayn
July 2005
Noises Off has as its first act a pastiche of traditional farce; as its second a contemporary variant on the formula; as its third, an elaborate undermining of it.
The play opens with a touring company dress-rehearsing "Nothing
On", a conventional farce. Mixing mockery and homage, Frayn heaps into
this play-within-a play a mêlée of stock characters and
situations. Charicatures - cheery char, outraged wife, and squeaky
blonde - stampede in and out of doors. Voices rise and trousers fall.
There are frenetic undressings, dressing-ups, and dressing-downs. All
of this periodically halts as the rehearsing cast fluffs lines and
muffs moves. Stepping out of the stereotypes they are playing, they
reveal themselves as another set of stereotypes: muzzy old trouper,
dimwit ingénue, self-dramatizing show stopper. Just enough
emerges from their inter-relationship to suggest that they themselves
are wobbling on the brink of the clandestine scamperings of farce.
The second act twists the set around. We witness the start of
"Nothing On" again; but this time from behind the scenes as it is
performed at a mid-week matinee. The doors of the set open and slam
with the familiar lunatic rapidity, but everything is now inverted.
With embers of the cast manically at odds, it is backstage that the
comedy is really fast and furious.
In the last act, the touring play is on its last legs. The set of
"Nothing On" is the familiar framework of doors. But the play's shape
is surreally pushed askew by lack of control. Demonstrating how farce
depends on precision, clockwork punctuality of exits and entrances,
Frayn carefully lets things become unsynchronized until the play skids
into a pile up of disastrous collisions, buckled business, and wrecked
lines....
For the show must go on... and on... and ....
Taken from File on Frayn. Compiled by Malcolm Page. London: Methuen, 1994. p. 30 / 31.