'Noises Off': Get Ready to Laugh & Laugh for Two Hours
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — That noise you're hearing coming out of Pittsfield? It's the howlin' and hootin' and seismic sounds from the crowd of people who packed the Barrington Stage Company's Boyd-Quinson Theater on Wednesday afternoon to catch the matinee of "Noises Off."
For all we know, days later, they are still standing, still hootin', and still hollerin'.
Blame it, or perhaps bless it, on Michael Frayn's comedy "Noises Off." (The phrase is show-biz jargon, meaning "sound heard in the wings.") "Noises Off" is often called "the funniest farce ever written," and after two hours and 20 minutes, I couldn't think of an exception.
The plot of "Noises Off," if you can call it a plot, tells the tale of the onstage and backstage antics of a fifth-rate acting troupe touring in the awful bedroom sex farce, "Nothing On." It's a play-within-a-play, and "Nothing On" must be about something, but it's hard to figure out what exactly.
The curtain opens on the dress rehearsal of the first act of "Nothing On" the night before it opens. Things are not going well.
In Act Two, we hear the Wednesday matinee a month after it's been running from behind the set (a magnificent, warm English cottage created by Sotirios Livaditis and Todd Rosenthal), where the fallout from unraveling romances causes more hilarity offstage than on.
Act Three takes us back to the first act of "Nothing On" for the final performance almost two months after that, by which time the emotional chaos has rendered the play entirely surreal.
Frayn (whose "Copenhagen" won the Tony Award for Best Play in 2000) has written a work as convoluted as crazy. To make a farce work there needs to be razor-sharp timing; the actors can't vary their movements by a millisecond. It's not easy to pull off. Anything else and the show lobbies into slow-motion, the laughs dwindle and the work flops.
Here, the timing is perfect: Doors slamming, sexual dalliances, a toupee that frees itself from a man's scalp, missed cues, more doors slamming, broken banisters, double entendres, a broken window, tax trouble, even more doors slamming ... and one-point-three million laughs. (The hysterical woman whom I sat near swore she wet her pants.)
Then there are sardines. Plates and plates of sardines that come and go, and are (a) used as dueling weapons, (b) crushed in a newspaper (c) sat on by the unsuspected, (d) dropped down a sexpot's cleavage. When the show was over I had an overwhelming desire for sardines, though I have never, ever tasted one.
The cast (all of whom are making their BSC debut) performs beyond brilliant, particularly Nehal Joshi as comic rival Garry Lejeune (after his fall down the staircase I was sure he was dead ... instead he was dead-on) and Orville Mendoza as dipsomaniac Selsden Mowbray. Jennifer Sánchez's character may not have all the lights in her marquee, but she's faultless as sexpot Brooke.
I confess that my favorite is Lesli Margherita as housekeeper Dotty Otley (Carol Burnett got the film role), whose sarcastic edge melds with, as the show goes on, precise clownish behavior. This is tightly-scripted chaos, and it all goes off without a hitch. For two hours (with an intermission) life has to be exacting to make it all work. And this cast of professionals is spot-on, never missing a beat or failing to get the laugh. Just think the discipline the cast has: Just how tough do you think it is playing a nutcase without breaking down?
Gordon Greenberg clearly is one of those directors with the gift to keep the whole play in his head as he puts the actors through their paces. (He has a surprise in Act Three.) "Noises Off" is comically incendiary and thankfully no one is around to put it out, at least until September 6.
"Noises off" continues at the Barrington Stage Company's Boyd-Quinson Theater until Sept. 6. For tickets or more information, call 413-242-6411 or visit barringtonstageco.org.
Tags: Barrington Stage, plays,
