Noises Off

Noises Off is a theatrical farce by English playwright Michael Frayn. First published in 1982, the play is a behind-the-scenes look at a chaotic stage production populated with frenetic and unstable actors, a volatile director, and an overworked and overly emotional stage crew. Interspersed throughout the typical narrative structure of the piece are scenes from the play-within-a-play the group is performing: a tacky sex comedy called Nothing On.

Act I opens at a technical rehearsal for Nothing On at the Grand Theatre in Weston-super-Mare, Great Britain. The show is only hours from its big premiere, but the cast is far from ready. Dotty Otley, a television star with top billing in the play (and also one of its principal investors), forgets what to do with her props, which include, inexplicably, a number of platefuls of sardines. Leading man Garry Lejeune constantly challenges the stage directions as they're written in the script. But Dotty and Garry aren't the only ones with problems. It seems every one of the actors struggles with some impairment: forgetting lines, missing their entrance and exit cues, dealing with a temperamental set where doors meant to open don't and doors meant to close stay open. Then there's Selsdon Mowbray, an aging, veteran actor with a monolithic drinking problem who appears to be just a few steps shy of death's door. He wanders around the set, habitually lost.

Attempting, unsuccessfully, to manage this mayhem is Lloyd Dallas, the director of Nothing On. Lloyd is a perfectionist with a fiery temper and a raging libido. He is having an affair with both newbie actress Brooke Ashton—who isn't terribly bright or talented and is virtually blind without her contact lenses, which she loses often throughout the play—and Poppy Norton-Taylor, the uber-sensitive stage manager who is nervous and skittish under the best of circumstances. And Nothing On is anything but the best of circumstances. By the end of Act I, Lloyd is helpless to stop the complete breakdown of his cast and crew. Tensions reach a breaking point, and everyone is either bickering or lost (both literally and figuratively).



Act II chronicles a weekday matinee performance of Nothing On one month after the events of Act I. Set at the Theatre Royal in Ashton-under-Lyne, this time the set is turned around so the viewing audience of the actual play can see what's happening behind the scenes. If the troubles of Act I were cracks in the façade, then they have turned into gaping, full-fledged fissures by the second act.

As the performance plays out on the other side of the set, the actors are in disarray. Dotty and Garry, who are dating, are not speaking after a heated fight, and each has locked themselves in their respective dressing rooms. Selsdon disappears—again. Garry, after emerging from his dressing room, becomes jealous of Freddie Fellowes, a dimwitted but well-intentioned actor in the play. Brooke is ready to quit the show right then and there. Confusion continues with the props, hitting the entrances and exits, and remembering lines, and Selsdon is still nowhere to be found. Against this backdrop, Poppy tells Lloyd—loudly—that she is pregnant with his child.

In Act III, it is the closing performance of Nothing On at the Municipal Theatre in Stockton-on-Tees. Somehow, this company got through an entire ten-week tour of the play. That doesn’t mean, however, that things are running any smoother backstage.



As Dotty argues with Belinda Blair, the one level head in the Nothing On ensemble, harried stage manager Tim Allgood goes out and informs the audience that there will be a slight delay before the show begins. When it finally does, Dotty is limping and confused, forgetting her lines and getting her blocking mixed up. Unable to pull herself back on course, the flubs cause Dotty to completely self-destruct. She starts making up lines, forcing the other actors to ad-lib along with her—something none of them are terribly adept at. Garry can't improvise to save his life; Brooke ignores what is happening around her and keeps saying her lines when she feels they are appropriate, even when they're anything but; and Selsdon is very, very drunk.

Lloyd intervenes, but just barely. He steers the actors toward something resembling a resolution before the curtain comes crashing down. Fittingly, it buries all the actors on the stage.

Noises Off premiered at the Lyric Theatre in London in 1982, where it was a smash hit and ran for five successful years. It debuted on Broadway in 1983 and ran for more than 500 performances. Noises Off is a favorite of both community and professional theatre companies. For anyone who has ever worked in the theatre, professional or amateur, or for anyone who has ever wondered at what goes on behind the scenes, Noises Off is both celebration and satire, a loving sendup of the idiosyncrasies that make the theatre such a uniquely human and powerful experience.