“Noises Off,” by British playwright Michael Frayn, is a delicious spoof of the theater, full of imagination, wit and humor. But “Noises Off” is as fragile as a souffle and can easily fall flat if not handled correctly.
Thankfully, Keegan Theatre director Mark A. Rhea knows just how to serve up this delightful backstage comedy, delivering it with plenty of speed and sparkle, allowing its unbridled chaos to spill over the stage in tightly controlled waves.
“Noises Off” is the story of an undistinguished theater company rehearsing a vapid sex farce called “Nothing On” in the fictional Grand Theatre, Weston-super-Mare. The play is set in the living room of the Brents’ country home while the Brents are on vacation. It’s the final rehearsal before the play’s opening the next day, and nothing is going right.
The woman playing the housekeeper in “Nothing On,” Dotty Otley (Charlotte Akin), is a sarcastic, middle-age actress who’s easily befuddled and can’t remember her lines. An inexperienced ing?nue, Brooke Ashton (Brianna Letourneau), never walks onstage in her role as sexpot Vicky; she saunters, arms outstretched, shouting rather than speaking her lines.
Garry LeJeune (Michael Innocenti) plays a hapless, disorganized real estate broker who has brought Vicky to the country home for a tryst, under the pretense of showing her the property. Their planned amorous meeting is interrupted by the return of the Brents, played by Frederick Fellows (Jon Townson), a suave-looking actor given to nosebleeds, and Belinda Blair (Susan Marie Rhea), an organized actress who continually saves the day onstage.
The final cast member is Selsdon Mowbray (Robert Leembruggen), an elderly alcoholic actor who’s supposed to play a burglar but keeps getting lost and wandering away from the set. The temperamental director, Lloyd Dallas (Jim Jorgensen) is on hand to browbeat his cast into submission, as is the stage manager, Tim (Colin Smith) and the assistant stage manager, Poppy (Elizabeth Jernigan).
If you go
‘Noises Off’
Where: The Keegan Theatre, 1742 Church St. NW
When: 8 p.m. Thursday to Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday; through Aug. 22
Info: $25 to $30; 703-892-0202; keegantheatre.com
Much of the comedy in “Noises Off” comes from the silliness of its characters and the foolish things they are made to do in “Nothing On.” It also comes from the fact that real life constantly impinges on the fictional world of the drama: Lloyd is having a fling with both Poppy and Vicky; Dotty is involved with Roger; Roger becomes outrageously jealous when he thinks Dotty is being unfaithful. Some of the real-life drama is revealed in Act I, as hints are dropped about liaisons. But it is in Act II, which takes place behind the scenery used for Act I, that the realities of the relationships in this company become clear. Using a turntable, set designer George Lucas allows the crazy momentum of Frayn’s plot to spin out of control backstage, while on the “front” side of the set the company gamely tries to present a Wednesday matinee of “Nothing On.”
By Act III, in a performance almost three months after opening, the company is in total disarray. There is no pretense of order, the words are completely garbled, the action is taken to extremes of absurdity. What was slapstick in Act II is now absolute bedlam as the company just waits for the final curtain to fall.
The success of this “Noises Off” is based entirely on the fact that it has an intelligent director and first-rate cast, capable of getting into Frayn’s goofy farcical zone and making “Nothing On” look bungled, while in fact every second of it is carefully planned, acted and choreographed. At issue is not just speed but energy and an ability to achieve high-powered, Marx Brothers-like comedic anarchy. With its wry comments on how theater works (or doesn’t) and its satire of self-dramatizing “artistes,” this “Noises Off” is a refreshing, buoyant peek behind the scenery.
