The Stage

Noises Off

Published Wednesday 14 December 2011 at 12:00 by Heather Neill

Michael Frayn’s much-loved 1982 farce has, according to a programme note, acquired ever more tweaks and twists with each revival. While it is still a touch difficult for Act 3 to match the mayhem of what has gone before, this must be the apotheosis of the piece.

Janie Dee, Celia Imrie, Robert Glenister and Amy Nuttall in Noises Off at the Old Vic Theatre, London Photo: Tristram Kenton

In Act 1 a touring company is struggling through the tech-cum-dress before opening a farce, Nothing On (think doors, dropped trousers and sardines). The fun comes from the tension between the actors’ sincere if incompetent attempts to do justice to second-rate material while, backstage, failing to keep real life under control. Sexual jealousy (widespread) and/or boozing (superannuated actor Selsdon, played by Karl Johnson with beardy determination to source whisky) threaten every performance. Act 2 shows with spectacular speedy physicality just how wild this can get behind the scenes.

Janie Dee, the company’s “mother” - always knowing who’s having a “thing” with whom, always ready with cold compress or mop - is a brilliant mime. But so is everyone else - gesticulating silently, these actors may kill each other but the show will go on.

By Act 3, familiarity has bred carelessness onstage and fury off it. Amy Nutall’s ingenue Brooke insists on saying the right lines however changed the context. Jamie Glover as the young male lead deserves a medal for his acrobatic descent downstairs. Robert Glenister is the sarcastic, philandering Oxbridge director failing to control it all. But the beauty of Lindsay Posner’s fine-tuned production is that everyone is equally part of a well-oiled machine. This gentle satire on thesps and fast-and-furious comment on human frailty is a glorious, hilarious, celebration of ensemble theatre.