Noises Off, Lyric Hammersmith, review: Frayn's farce about a farce raises laughs, but not the roof
The play for which Michael Frayn will be remembered arrived in the West End in 1982, just as the Falklands War was starting. The final curtain didn’t fall until 1986. Audiences guffawed so helplessly that staff at the Savoy checked seats after each show for urine stains.
The idea? Simple, inspired. In Act One we see the fraught late-night technical-cum-dress rehearsal for a creaky old sex farce (Nothing On) in Weston-super-Mare. In Act Two, we go back-stage at a matinee a month later – in Ashton-under-Lyne – where the cast, warring among themselves and jeopardising those split-second timings, battle to keep the show going, with much frantic miming and farce-like carry-on. The final act – two months further into the tour (in Stockton) – reprises the original scene from Nothing On, only it’s now in a state of utterly demented disrepair: botched lines, misplaced props, mistimed entrances/exits, desperate ad-libs, collapsing scenery: it’s like being inside a nervous breakdown, conjuring a vision of humanity snared in meaningless activity.
Over the years, numerous casts – not only in the UK but widely abroad too – have undertaken the complex, challenging task of bringing Frayn’s labour of theatrical love (conceived some 12 years before it fully saw the light of day) to door-slamming, trouser-dropping life. But there’s a sentimental twist to this fresh production from Jeremy Herrin, which brings the play back to the Lyric Hammersmith, where it all started, for the first time.
More so than reviving Pinter’s The Birthday Party (which also premiered here, but notoriously flopped) – this homecoming feels a little like tempting fate: no one knew, back in early 1982, what awaited them; now that element of surprise has gone, and the play’s status is almost daunting. Fate was duly tempted at Tuesday’s opening night: in the venerable presence of the author and the original (crucial) director Michael Blakemore, a glitch mid-way through the second act saw the lights fail, the show halt.
It was memorable in a life-meets-art way, but not especially funny, underlining the fact that while we love to see things going awry on stage there’s a knack to it. The cast coped heroically but I’d be lying if I said the evening had been flying up to that point. The direction is meticulous, the energy is unflagging, ample resource has gone into the mock-Tudor country house set and its backstage counterpart. Many of the cast – Debra Gillett, Meera Syal, Daniel Rigby – are naturally gifted at comedy.
True, some of the plot detail is so fine, it tends to blur at speed. We can be so busy keeping up, and admiring the craftsmanship, we forget to laugh. But undeniably, a cultural shift has pushed the play further away from us - the hoary farce Frayn sent up is now rarely sighted. And audiences today are warier of material that trades on stereotypes: the predatory, callous director, who has competing women on the go; the stock-type ‘Arabs’ in “Nothing On”, too.
Because we’re more tentative, the actors need to work even harder without showing the strain. All we need perhaps is a bit more, well, ‘noise’, vocal projection and confidence, from the opening set-up (when Syal’s batty Dotty introduces us to the groanworthy running-gag about a plate of sardines), past the mid-way antics and onto the backstage crashes that precede the final act.
There are moments here of hallucinogenic hilarity – the collective tip-toeing when an actress’s contact-lens goes missing, the three-minute call that threatens to become eternally drawn out – all this, and more, demand seeing. But raising the roof? Causing bladders to leak? We’re some way off that.
Noises Off is at the Lyric Hammersmith, London W6, until August 3. Tickets: 0844 871 2118; Telegraph Tickets
