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[Theater reviews]

Full farce
Noises Off has nothing on Trinity Rep

BY CAROLYN CLAY

Noises Off
By Michael Frayn. Directed by Amanda Dehnert. Set by David Jenkins. Costumes by Phillip Contic. Lights by Amy Appleyard. Sound by Peter Sasha Hurowitz. With Cynthia Strickland, Fred Sullivan Jr., Stephen Thorne, Jennifer Mudge-Tucker, Angela Brazil, Stephen Berenson, Janice Duclos, Mauro Hantman, and Timothy Crowe. At Trinity Repertory Company through October 7.

At first, it seems crazy that the same brain spawned the 1982 farce Noises Off and the 2000 Tony winner Copenhagen, which has to do with physicists Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr. But British playwright Michael Frayn did write both plays, and there may even be some physics in the earlier one, which is built on a touring production of a bad British sex comedy as it crumbles into chaos and ruin. Certainly the characters, if not the material, make quantum leaps — across furniture, through windows, and, in one impressive case, down a staircase like a bouncing ball.

Noises Off may not be as heady as Copenhagen (which Trinity Rep has also scheduled this season), but it achieves, as few contemporary attempts do, the calibrated anarchy of true farce. And the current Trinity staging captures not just the energetic inanity of its goings-on but also the characters’ increasing desperation and, in the third act, the onset of a madness that is at once hilarious and terrible. The only hitch is the central gimmick, in which the audience is invited to change dining rooms as the actors chew the scenery.

Noises Off was made into a disappointing movie, but as a surefire stage piece its time would appear to have come again — a hit West End revival is currently headed to Broadway. The show is both a parody of the senseless, winking British sex farces that limped about the provinces in the heyday of the touring companies and a backstage farce of its own. All three acts depict the first act of a silly bit of slap-and-tickle called Nothing On, which hinges less on wit or plot than on seven malfunctioning doors and four plates of sardines. The work is first seen as it fails to come together at its dress rehearsal; then viewed from backstage, as it degenerates into wackiness and warfare mid tour; and finally seen from out front again as it detonates into senseless shards at its final performance (for which the Trinity audience is issued programs).

In most productions, a revolving set reveals the backstage-set middle act. At Trinity, it is the audience rather than the set that moves. Director Amanda Dehnert and her frequent collaborator, set designer David Jenkins, have devised a scheme whereby the entire audience migrates backstage for act two, then returns to its original position for the final carnage. It’s a cute conceit, reminiscent of Trinity founding director Adrian Hall. But the steep backstage bleachers make for an obstructed view, which is unfortunate when so many of the performance-sabotaging antics are visual. Besides, the execution of the move, which has a " Noises Off color guard " issuing instructions in an Up with People manner, makes you feel as if you were on a camping trip.

That aside, the production is like a hurtling, slapstick ballet starring real people. Noises Off’s first act, which is largely a set-up, is its weakest; Dehnert uses it to establish both the humanness and the thespian ineptitude of the actors who make up the cast of Nothing On. Most of them look frozen in the stage lights, and they gesture like flight attendants pointing out the overhead bins. In one of act three’s funniest moments, Stephen Thorne, as leading man Gary Lejeune, remembers to repeat one of his exaggerated, autopilot gestures as he careens down a staircase in the midst of abject, sardine-raining chaos. A seemingly absent God, he must hope, is in the details.

The Nothing On cast is headed by has-been actress Dotty Otley, who, in Cynthia Strickland’s skillful hands, descends from wan hope to hard boil to a madness that is at once comical and sinister. Thorne plays her younger, jealous lover, Lejeune, as an affable daff whose dedication extends to crashing through almost an entire act with his shoelaces tied together. Jennifer Mudge-Tucker is the game if dim sexpot, Timothy Crowe the seasoned if pickled Shakespearean, Stephen Berenson the sensitive if hapless thespian shlub, and Janice Duclos the motherly gossip who tries, vainly, to keep show and company from meltdown. Fred Sullivan Jr.’s director is a self-proclaimed god on a boat to hell. Mauro Hantman merges catatonia and panic as the stage manager. And Angela Brazil is adorable as his assistant, who, in one dexterous if desperate moment, is divorced from her jumpsuit like a hot dog being pulled from a bun. If Actors Equity doesn’t mandate combat pay, it should.

Issue Date: September 13 - 20, 2001