Michael Frayn’s Noises Offmay be one big gimmick, but what a gimmick.
The play is split into three acts. In the first, a second-rate troupe of actors is in final rehearsals for Nothing On, a very English farce full of bad jokes, pratfalls, class caricature laid on thick and a running gag about sardines. It’s 24 hours until opening night, and the production’s director (Marcus Graham), is tearing his hair out. In the next act, the set’s been revolved 180 degrees – we’re now backstage in the middle of a performance. A month into its tour of regional dives, the company is coming apart. The play’s star Garry (Josh McConville) is convinced that Dotty (Genevieve Lemon) is cheating on him with another actor, and Garry is trying to kill said actor between entrances. Finally, the set is rotated back again, and we watch the play within the play as it careens wildly off the rails, beset by injuries and self-sabotage.
Jonathan Biggins’ production is powered by a kind of exhilaration. McConville as Garry is outstanding, and he’s matched by the rest of the cast. I’ve heard some dodgy English accents on Australian stages in recent times, not least in the STC’s own Loot, also starring McConville. But the cast here nails it, not just the accents but the whole climate of run-down regional touring.
It’s a hugely physical show; particularly in the second act when we’re privy to the goings on in the wings and backstage, the play basically becomes a silent comedy, like a sort of turbocharged Mr. Bean. The play’s last third, a crescendo of incompetence, is brilliantly done but could be half as long. As an aria of flubbed lines and missed entrances, it’s sublime, but inevitably repetitive. Still, 2014 will be a good year if the STC delivers another show as fluid and gloriously unpretentious as this one.
3/5 stars
Noises Off is at The Opera House Drama Theatre until April 5.
