A door-slamming good time for all
Silhouette Stages presents Michael Frayn's ‘Noises Off' at Slayton House Theater
If a farce needs plenty of doors to slam, Michael Frayn's “Noises Off” is a door-slamming wonder. The energetic Silhouette Stages production rises to the challenge with a two-level domestic set containing seven doors that get a lot of use.
Characters also come and go through a window, as well as through a curtain over an entrance to the attic. And one of the characters is in the auditorium with the audience and then climbs a few steps to get up on stage, so you feel like this set can be entered from just about anywhere.
That stage-ascending character has a valid reason for such behavior, because “Noises Off” is a play that's about putting on a play. Based on what we see of it, the play-within-a-play, titled “Nothing On,” is a dreadful farce about naughty people misbehaving in a country house.
Frayn's 1982 comedy, which is enjoying a much-praised revival in New York, certainly makes the most of its premise.
It's really hilarious to watch the actor-characters trying to remember their lines and where to move on stage as they rehearse just before embarking on a tour of the British provinces.
To put it mildly, things do not look promising.
That's why director Lloyd Dallas, played by Gary Reichard, nervously goes from making snarky off-stage comments to dashing up on stage to complain to his actors at closer quarters.
He definitely has his work cut out for him. Just consider how Dallas has to reason with one of the supporting actors, Dotty Otley, portrayed by Maribeth Vogel, who portrays a maid in “Nothing On.” Otley can never remember where to place a tray of sardines, and she isn't any better when it comes to coordinating her timing when picking up a ringing telephone.
Then there is actor Selsdon Mowbray, played by Don Patterson, who likes to drink booze and disappear just when his character should be appearing on stage.
“Noises Off” gets considerable comic mileage out of such running gags as the misplaced tray of sardines and the missing-in-action actor. As the frazzled director Dallas says: “That's what it's all about: doors and sardines.”
Alas, whatever can go wrong with the doors and sardines in “Nothing On” repeatedly goes wrong.
The three Silhouette Stages actors playing those three actor-characters have a lot of fun indulging this play's supreme sense of silliness. There's yet more fun to be had from the rest of the Silhouette Stages cast, playing over-the-top actors and flustered members of the stage crew whose behind-the-scenes confrontations more than match what the onstage characters are up to.
Under these theater-about-theater circumstances, it seems apt to list the remaining actor-characters followed by the names of the Silhouette Stages actors playing them: Gary Lejeune (Ryan Reichard), Brooke Ashton (Allie Dreskin), Poppy Norton-Taylor (Parker Bailey Steven), Frederick Fellowes (Jeff Dunne), Belinda Blair (Julie Press) and Tim Allgood (Adam Abruzzo).
These first-rate Silhouette Stages actors really get into the frantic proceedings as a second-rate British acting troupe for whom disaster always seems about to arrive with the next stage entrance. Although there are scenes in which the Silhouette Stages cast needs a snappier pace, these actors generally have smart comic timing in this production directed by Conni Ross.
Of course, the real star of any production of “Noises Off” is the set construction. When the first act opens, we see that two-level domestic set just as a British theater audience would; however, the second act opens with the set completely turned around, meaning that we see how it would look from backstage.
Having seen “Nothing On” in rehearsal, we are so familiar with its production-crippling problems that we're now primed to see them from a backstage perspective.
That set-flipping change is achieved by the hardworking Silhouette Stages production crew during intermission. Even though an additional set change during the intermission-less interval prior to the third act takes longer than it should, the entire production team deserves credit.
It's all in the service of a very funny play. Much of the noise you hear is your own laughter.
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