Noises Off

by Michael Frayn 

Produced by Arena StageReviewed by Tim Treanor About twenty-five years ago the relentlessly serious English playwright Michael Frayn (Democracy, Copenhagen) wrote Noises Off, a farce about, well, a farce.  It is a little like discovering that Aristotle also wrote limericks.  (“There once was a philosopher named Plato/Whose cosmology was expressed in the Phaedo/When it came time for some fun/Watch out for your…” and so on.)He imagined what it would be like to have a mediocre farce produced by a fantastically incompetent theater company which was in addition beset by romantic jealousies and rivalries which they simply could not keep off the stage.  Alternating between backstage and front-stage views of this awful show, the audience would be given the rare treat of seeing a train wreck in action, slowly and miserably grinding in on itself until it was left wincing and wheezing in laughter.The result was a play which was wildly successful, both commercially and critically, and has now become a classic and a standard, revived regularly by regional and community theaters.  This is probably a mistake, since it takes more skill to stage this production than is immediately apparent.  In brief, it takes real talent to act this badly.It is not a problem for Arena Stage.  Noises Off is the story of a production of Nothing On, a bedroom farce of the door-slamming, mistaken-identity variety involving file boxes, burglars , nott necessarily in that order.  The old theatrical warhorse Dotty Otley (Helen Carey) has decided to finance a tour of this production, featuring her in the juicy role of the housekeeper, Mrs. Clackett.  She hopes it will earn enough back to allow her to retire, as her skills have deteriorated alarmingly.The cynical Lloyd Dallas (James Gale) directs a cast of fools and whiners, including the dipsomaniacal Selsdon Mowbray (Robert Prosky), Brooke Ashton (Amelia McClain), who is got up to bear a dismaying resemblance to Barbie™, Garry Lejeune (Stephen Schnetzer), who has no idea what he’s talking about but hopes you do, the ever-apologetic Frederick Fellowes (Stephen F. Schmidt), and the incorrigible gossip Belinda Blair (Lynnda Ferguson).  In short, your typical theater troupe.  Beleaguered stage manager Tim Allgood (Jay Russell) has the additional task of standing in for Mowbray on those days when Mowbray can’t stand up, and Poppy Norton-Taylor (Susan Lynskey) backs up the stage manager.The cast and crew are beset with mighty feelings towards each other – some good, the rest bad.  I will not detail them for you, because much of the fun is figuring them out and seeing them in action.  Nor will I attempt to describe the startling ways in which they express their feelings towards each other during a production or the catastrophic effect that it has on the performance of Nothing On.  It would be like attempting to describe a rainbow by using refraction equations.  Suffice it to say that the play requires slam-bang, spot-on comic timing and the Arena cast, and able director Jonathan Munby, achieve it.This is not to say that all parts of the play are a laugh riot.  Part of the problem is that Washington theater audiences simply have no experience with the sort of half-baked production that Frayn is describing here.  Although there have certainly been productions in D.C. which have not succeeded, the sort of nonsense that Frayn is depicting simply doesn’t happen on the professional stage here.  Thus there is a bit of a credibility gap which occurs at the beginning of Noises Off; and despite this impeccable cast’s easy inhabitation of their roles, it takes a while to fully accept the play.  Once done, though – and particularly in the final production of Nothing On, in the second Act of Noises Off, — it becomes as funny as the production of Pyramis and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.There are two special elements to this production worth noting.  In an excellent cast, Carey is outstanding.  Her depiction of the befuddled Otley is fresh, original, at times heartbreaking, and so funny it will make you drool.  And do not miss the special program for Nothing On that Frayn created, which is incorporated into the Noises Off program’s reverse side.  Frayn has included a mock essay on the intellectual antecedents of the British bedroom farce which is so astonishingly pompous that it recalls Christopher Guest and is as funny as any of the dialogue.  Don’t miss it. Noises Off runs Tuesdays through Sundays at Arena Stage’s Kreeger Theater until January 28.  Sundays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays begin at 7.30, except that there is no show on Sunday, December 24; on Tuesday, January 9, the show begins at noon and on Sunday, January 14, the show begins at 6 p.m.  Thursdays through Saturdays begin at 8 p.m.  In addition, there are 2 p.m. shows on Saturdays and Sundays except for Sunday, December 24; Sunday, January 14 and Sunday, January 21.  There is a show which begins at noon on Wednesday, January 10 and Wednesday, January 17.  Tickets run from $47 to $66 and may be had at www.arenastage.org or by calling 202.488.3300.