NOISES OFF. To 30 June.

Liverpool

NOISES OFF
by Michael Frayn

Liverpool Playhouse To 30 June 2007
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 21, 28 June 1.30pm 23, 30 June 2pm
Audio-described 28 June 7.30pm
BSL Signed 27 June
Post-show discussion 20 June
Runs 2hr 25min One interval

TICKETS: 0151 709 4776
www.everymanplayhouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 June

As much fun as you can have with the actors’ clothes on.
In Michael Frayn’s early play, Alphabetical Order, the floor of a newspaper archive office ends up littered with cuttings. Years after Noises Off, now revived in Liverpool, his Copenhagen looped itself around Walter Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, focusing on a conversation between Heisenberg and Danish scientist Niels Bohr, the content of which no-one can know. If there’s one sure thread through Frayn’s work, it appears to be the tension between order and chaos, knowledge and confusion.

So theatrical farce was a natural landing-place for his attention. Theatre offers a highly-ordered product at the mercy of present-tense contingencies; everything’s organised to go all right on the night, but so much can, in the event, go wrong. Farce particularly brings the need for split-second organisation into close company with the ever-present threat of chaos, with its helter-skelter action through multiple doors, its cross-purposes and furious speed.

English farce is also associated with the bad old days of weekly rep and shabby tours intended to revive fading fortunes. That’s why Dotty Otley’s sunk her money into hiring director Lloyd Dallas and a mixed-bag cast for a tour of ripe old vehicle Nothing On.

David Leonard brings a suitably silky self-control to Lloyd, even when pointing out the ever-nearing first night in Act One’s technical/dress rehearsal. Leonard makes a point by lightly tossing the script onto the stage, or patiently providing a spurious motivation to satisfy an actor who needs to be told some - any - reason for his character’s behaviour.

Every acting type seems to be here, from Anna Acton’s attractive ingénue, whose technical proficiency allows no glimmer of intelligence or flexibility, to Fred Pearson’s old-time drinker, a delight that’s never over-played. As the cast skedaddle around, Laura Doddington’s emotionally-battered stage manager stoically tries to hold herself together, as that’s what stage managers do.

The central act, set backstage, where personal rivalries emerge, provides, with Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular, theatre’s funniest-ever middle act built on human misery. The comedy’s not quite focused here – it’s amusing rather than incandescently funny - but director Philip Wilson ensures the final, end-of-tour act is hilarious.

Brooke Ashton: Anna Acton
Frederick Fellowes: Matthew Cottle
Poppy Norton-Taylor: Laura Doddington
Belinda Blair: Fiona Dunn
Tim Allgood: Simon Harrison
Lloyd Dallas: David Leonard
Garry Lejeune: Damien Matthews
Dotty Otley: Geraldine McNulty
Selsdon Mowbray: Fred Pearson

Director: Philip Wilson
Designer: Mike Britton
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick
Sound: Jason Barnes
Fight director: Terry King

2007-06-21 05:03:54