Michael Todd
Assistant Spectrum Editor
Featuring an alcoholic playing a burglar, surprise pregnancies and several plates of misplaced sardines, “Noises Off” sends audience members on a rollercoaster of comedy that starts before the show and never seems to end.
A hilarious and exaggerated exploration of the very real potential disasters that can occur in theater, everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. The audience views each show concurrently as the internal show suffers at the expense of the actors’ personal dramas, all as a result of jealousy and the misinterpretations of outrageous actions.
As a guest director, Anita Maynard-Losh had never worked with the actors before their 30-second to one-minute monologues and only had callbacks as a supplement to help her select what has proved to be a cast as successfully diverse and hilarious off stage as on. Elliot Duffy, who plays Garry, went so far as to say that their characters echo their actual personalities.
“(We had to) push past how the characters are generally played, their stereotypes, and find the depth,” said Lauren Davis, who played Dotty the frazzled maid. “You have to find the tragedy of your character before you can have any comedy, because comedy comes from reality.”
Despite being a sexual farce, cast members engaged in several exercises to help develop a deeper sense of understanding of their characters as real people as opposed to just comedic characters.
Davis added, “It’s the recognition that you’re playing one character throughout, but sometimes your character is playing someone else, and how far are they playing that other person, and at what point are they letting it go and being themselves?”
Usually the cast warmed up with character exercises for 30 minutes to an hour before rehearsal even started. In one such exercise, each cast member had to create a monologue using one significant prop to address a “turning point” in each character’s life; many of these glimpses into the characters’ dynamics were soberingly serious.
“You have to create real people,” said Madeline Lovegrove, who played stage manager Poppy and was therefore one of the only characters without a double. “Even if you’re in a farce, and the circumstances are unrealistic, it has to be real for you. You have to be a real person (before you can) be funny.”
A play within a play, “Noises Off” features a cast of British actors attempting to perform the sex comedy “Nothing On” while simultaneously juggling the chaos generated as a direct result of their own intertwining relationships.
The momentum is already well in motion when the lights go up, and audience members have to pay attention from the beginning in order to keep up throughout the show. In this way, the cast challenges the audience to match their energy, rather than the expected scenario of the casts’ energy rising as a direct result of the presence of an audience that was absent during the rehearsal process.
The “Noises Off” cast of VCU theater students only had one week to rehearse on the set, which was constructed by freshmen theater students in their mandatory set design classes.
With several sexual puns “squeezed in” in the form of both words and actions, a great many spoken jokes were missed due to the roar of audience laughter. Even more were so subtle that they were missed, and even the cast members admit they are still finding hidden puns within the script.
Not directly stated, it is up to the actors to portray the passage of time and evolving dynamics of the plots and characters.
The first act, beginning with the dress rehearsal for “Nothing On,” features constant starting and stopping as characters question their character’s actions, the set malfunctions and one cast member goes missing.
A brief intermission between the shorter following acts, act two jumps ahead to a performance occurring after the opening of “Nothing On.” With only the second show’s characters speaking their lines and the set rotated away from the audience to allow a view from backstage, this act occurs almost entirely in silence and relies entirely on choreographed movement, as well as the recognition of voice and sound activated cues. The hilarity of this act is conveyed through its obvious high tension and the movements as actors continuously seek revenge and sabotage every time they slip backstage.
The third act is once again viewed from the front at an even later date, with the show falling even farther downhill than before, adding even more comedy as character’s performers engaging in ridiculous improvisation as the show collapses around them.
On opening night, the hectic atmosphere of the show disguised most mistakes from being obvious to the audience. Cast members constantly saved one another from realistic turmoil that merely shadowed the actual train wreck occurring within the second show. This sense of team effort, present in any show but especially prevalent here, was absolutely key not only in keeping the show rolling, but also to help the havoc appear as organic and unintentional as possible.
With so many things happening all at once during this show, it is objectively impossible for audience members to absorb its full content in a single viewing. However, readers need not despair; “Noises Off” is so saturated with comedy that audience members can find a laugh from any angle. This combination of tear-inducing humorous content and seamlessly synchronized and consistent execution make “Noises Off” an absolute must-see.