About
the Play:
Noises Off was one of Royal
National Theatre of Britain's top 100 plays of the 20th century.
Noises Off is a full-length comedy by Michael Frayn.
Hurtling along at breakneck speed, Noises Off follows the on
and offstage antics of a touring theatre company as they stumble
their way through the fictional farce, Nothing On. Called "the
funniest farce ever written," this frequently revived and
frequently beloved comedy has sent reviewers searching for new
accolades. Especially
recommended for school and contest use.
Noises Off serves up a riotous double bill – a play
within a play. Ever gone to a play and something went wrong? What
happens when everything goes wrong? The hilarious story of six
actors, one director and two stage managers who are touring a
production, it is not one play but two: simultaneously the fictional
farce, Nothing On, and the backstage "drama" that
develops during the final rehearsal. The actors are dating each
other, the director is dating everyone and one stage manager is
trying to tell him that she's pregnant. With opening night just hours
away, things could not be going worse. Lines are forgotten and the
two plays begin to interlock as the characters make their exits from
Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the
even worse nightmare going on backstage. Love triangles are
unravelling and complete pandemonium ensues. Will the cast pull their
act together on stage even if they can't behind the scenes? In the
end, at the disastrous final performance, the two plots can be kept
separate no longer, and coalesce into a single collective nervous
breakdown. Noises Off is an uproarious backstage comedy of
epic proportions – and the laugh-until-you-cry guilty pleasure of
audiences for decades.
Noises Off premiered in 1982 at the Lyric Theatre,
Hammersmith, London to universally ecstatic reviews and shortly after
transferred to the Savoy Theatre in the West End, where it ran for
nearly five years. It won the Evening Standard and the Olivier Awards
for Best Comedy. Noises Off opened on Broadway at the Brooks
Atkinson Theatre in 1983, where it ran for 553 performances. It's
still enormously popular, and has been a staple of community
theatres, regional repertory houses, and high schools since then.
Cast: 4 female, 5 male
What people say:
"The most dexterously realized
comedy ever about putting on a comedy. A spectacularly funny,
peerless backstage farce. This dizzy, well-known romp is festival of
delirium." — The New York Times
"The funniest farce ever
written! Never before has side-splitting taken on a meaning
dangerously close to the non-metaphorically medical." —
New York Post
"If laughter is the best
medicine, this flawless show is capable of curing double pneumonia."
— The Wall Street Journal
"A triumph … An essential
hysterical fix … Masterly." — The New York
Observer
"A comic masterpiece."
— Daily Telegraph
"Bumper car brilliance … If
laughter is indeed the best medicine, Noises Off is
worth its weight in Cipro." — New York Daily News
"First-rate … Clever and
intricately crafted … Sublime." — The Boston Globe
"As side-splitting a farce as
I have seen. Ever? Ever." — New York Magazine
About the Playwright:
Michael Frayn is an English writer who enjoys equally
successful careers as dramatist, novelist and translator, having
started out as an award-winning journalist. He is best known as the
author of the farce Noises Off and the drama
Copenhagen, which was awarded the Tony Award for
Best Play, as well as the Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk awards
and, in the United Kingdom, the Olivier and Evening Standard
awards. His novel Headlong was shortlisted for the
Mann Booker Prize. Born in London in 1933 and educated at Cambridge,
Frayn is married to the biographer and critic Claire Tomalin;
they live in London.