Noises Off

Plot

M6 F4. A living-room stage set, backstage behind the set

This clever, smash-hit farce won numerous awards. "The play opens with a touring company dress-rehearsing Nothing On, a conventional farce. Mixing mockery and homage, Frayn heaps into this play-within-a-play a hilarious melée of stock characters and situations. Caricatures - cheeky char, outraged wife and squeaky blonde - stampede in and out of doors. Voices rise and trousers fall ... a farce that makes you think as well as laugh." Times Literary Supplement.

A farce about a farce, taking the cliches of the genre and shaking them inventively through a series of kaleidoscopic patterns. Never missing a trick, it has as its first  act a pastiche of traditional farce; as its second, a contemporary variant on the formula; as its third, an elaborate undermining of it. The play opens with a touring company dress-rehearsing Nothing On, a conventional farce. Mixing mockery and homage, Frayn heaps into this play-within-a-play a hilarious melee of stock characters and situations. Cariacatures - cheery char, outraged wife and squeaky blonde - stampede in and out of doors. Voices rise and trousers fall...a farce that makes you think as well as laugh.

This is one of the most challenging plays for amateurs to perform because of its technical staging. A split level set with at least seven doors has to be reversed not once but twice during the show. Act two demands the utmost concentration to time mimed actions backstage with the dialogue 'on stage'. It was decided to attempt this play because it was our final offering of the twentieth century.

One notable comment made by an audience member after seeing Masham Players brilliant showing of 'Noises Off' was: "I understand that play now. I've seen it done proffessionally and have never been able to follow it" Whatever the reasons for that feeling, WELL DONE to all those involved.