Noises Off is Michael Frayn’s wonderful comedy which makes a farce of a farce within a farce.
The form is beautifully observed as the audience sees a trouser-dropping extravaganza from all viewpoints.
It begins with the cast of an average touring company at the final rehearsal of their touring production, Nothing On-one of those farces that involves lots of entrances and exits through lots of doors, startled faces to the audience and a complete absence of reality.
The plot is, of course, utterly baffling and runs a serpentine course until reaching its nonsensical conclusion.
Frayn’s recreation of the saucy farce, which seems to have dropped out of theatre taking its trousers with it, is hilariously accurate.
Not only does the audience have the daft delights of Nothing On to feast their eyes on, but there is also the internal drama within the company.
Love among the luvvies is a vicious business.
Sexual jealousy is at a peak and rivalries come to the fore.
In the next act, the audience sees backstage with the actors entering and exiting Nothing On which has nothing on the real drama raging in the wings.
In a tremendous, almost wordless, sequence, the tensions between the cast are acted out.
The last act shows how almost everyone has lost the plot and their vain efforts to keep the show on track.
The nine-strong ensemble, under the direction of Ken Alexander, spares no effort in conveying both the theatrical and personal disasters that afflict the cast.
Greg Powrie is on fine form, as the lusty young buck in Nothing On and the insanely jealous lover offstage, while David Delve’s randy old Welsh director with a touch of the Burtons and increasingly driven mad by the untalented cast is nicely tuned.
However it is a piece where everyone has to pull together and, in the main, they do.
There does have to be absolute discipline in creating theatrical anarchy.
Order has to be used to bring forth chaos and there are occasional lapses.
It’s not a fatal flaw, however, and is the sort of show that is a delight both in its sheer silliness and the cleverness with which farce is made even more farcical.
Photos used by kind permission of Pitlochry Festival Theatre.