Winter Play 'Noises Off' A Huge Hit
This Winter, the Old Farms Theater Company put on a truly hysterical performance of Michael Frayn's Noises Off, in which the actors took on the task of performing as a second-rate cast producing a show. In addition to keeping the audience on their toes, this play-within-a-play had the added effect of building layers on top of layers of comedy while the performers are stretched to the limits of their physical and mental capabilities.
Each of the three acts of Noises Off contains a performance of the first act of a play within a play, called Nothing On, a show about two couples who have gone on a romantic retreat to what they believe to be an empty house, which also happens to get burglarized while they’re there, but it’s really so much more ... People are running about, pants are falling down, sardines are flying everywhere, and the set of many doors is continually banging open and shut.
In Act One, we meet the cast as they try to get through their dress rehearsal. It is midnight, the night before the first performance, and the cast is hopelessly unready. The lights come up while a telephone rings, and Porter’s freshman Lily Jenden playing Dotty Otley (who in turn is playing Mrs. Clackett, a housekeeper) rushes to answer the call. But then, a voice from the back of the theater draws the audience's attention: Avon freshman Jackson Salafia (playing the director Lloyd Dallas) is shouting stage directions.
Baffled audience members eventually catch on that they are immersed in a rehearsal and follow along as the cast repeatedly fumbles with entrances and exits, missed cues, missed lines, and bothersome props, including several plates of sardines. They begin to empathize with Bon Bhakdibhumi ’19, playing Tim Allgood, technical support and stagehand; Emma Ruccio, playing stage manager Poppy; and Liv Yonkman, playing Belinda Blair, one of the few cast members who seems to have any clue at all. They also learn that Matt Jensen ’19 (playing an old man and hard-of-hearing Selsdon Mowbray) has a tendency of wandering off, and star of the show Vicki (played by Porter’s junior Laura Herscovici) is rather clueless and has trouble keeping her contact lenses in place.
Pengyu Si (SP) ’19 nails the earnest insecurity of Frederick Fellowes, an actor who pleads to know the motivation for the most insignificant detail his character performs, and Taylor Stolworthy ’19, as Garry Lejeune, is awfully believable as someone who just wishes they could get through the show in one piece.
Act Two shows a Wednesday matinée performance one month later, but, during intermission the impressive two-story set has been rotated 180 degrees.
“Our master builder, Mr. Kassel, told me that this is the largest set he has ever had to build in his 24 years of constructing theatrical sets at Avon Old Farms,” shared producer Chris Bolster. “Due to the extensive nature of the set, the actors were not able to rehearse onstage until less than three weeks before the show opened. One week before opening significant parts of the set were still under construction.”
In this act, the revered set allows the live audience to watch the now familiar show from ‘backstage,’ providing a view that emphasizes the deteriorating relationships between the cast. Now, the audience has several revelations about what goes on in the wings during a theatrical performance. Romantic rivalries, lovers' tiffs, and personal quarrels lead to offstage shenanigans, onstage bedlam, and the occasional attack with a fire ax … Where did that come from, anyway?
Finally, in Act Three, the now familiar stagehand Tim (Bhakdibhumi) welcomes the audience to what will be the final performance of the cast's 10-week run. The audience quickly realizes the production has disintegrated so thoroughly that, as Dolly (Jenden) indicates, nobody really knows where they are in the script, or whether they should bother with the script at all, and from then on, the laughing never stops. The actors attempt to cover up the mounting chaos, but it is not long before the plot has to be abandoned entirely and somehow, we end up with three people playing one role on stage.
“In many ways, this is the most challenging play produced during my time at Avon Old Farms,” said Bolster. “It is certainly the most ambitious in terms of on-stage logistics. In this play, the movement of props and actors needs to be precisely timed. As an exasperated Garry says during a break in the cast’s disastrous final dress rehearsal, ‘There’s four plates of sardines coming on in Act One alone! They go here, they go there. She takes them—I take them … Plus we’ve got bags, we’ve got boxes. Plus doors. Plus words … I’m just saying. Words. Doors. Bags. Boxes. Sardines. Us. OK? I’ve made my point?’”