Theatre
Noises Off
Manoel Theatre

The theatre has entertained audiences for centuries, but what is often the most entertaining for the actors involved is what happens in the run-up to the show and the madness of backstage events. These stories live on, retold as anecdotes and horror stories, long after the actual performance has been done and dusted.

Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, currently being staged by Masquerade Theatre Company at the Manoel Theatre, takes the concept of the play-within-a-play and presents the audience with a choice selection of what could possibly go wrong during a production, focusing on how the breakdown in dynamicsbetween actors and othersinvolved off-stage can affect their performance.

The play starts on the eve of opening night. With just over 12 hours to go before curtain up, the company is still having trouble rehearsing the complicated entrances and exits and juggling different props required for its touring play, Nothing On.

Everybody is becoming increasingly edgy about the first performance as tensions mount between director Lloyd Dallas (Stephen Oliver) and his cast of established TV and screen actors, whose eccentric characters often get in the way of their performances.

Polly March plays veteran actress Dotty Otley, who has made a name for herself playing essentially the same character type: a good-humoured, no-nonsense, rather abstracted working-class woman –this time around playing the role of a housekeeper – who has to deal with Alan Paris’s Garry Lejeune on stage using his position as an estate agent to bed a naïve young woman, played by Jo Caruana as actress Brooke Ashton.

Off-stage we find that Garry and Dotty’s relationship isn’t strictly professional in spite of their age difference, thanks to goody-two-shoes actress Belinda Blair (Daphne Said) and her gossiping. Belinda and actor Frederick Fellowes (Stefan Farrugia) play the owners of the country house, returned unexpectedly for a quiet weekend to get away from their creditors who have traced them to Spain.

The housekeeper Dotty has to keep the two couples apart while trying to settle down to watch TV with a plate of sardines, so when a burglar appears, played by Selsdon Mowbray (Victor Debono), the plot gets more complicated. Throw in Tim Allgood, the stage manager (Tom Camilleri) and assistant stage manager Poppy Norton-Taylor (Tina Rizzo) trying to solve everyone’s problems, and you’re guaranteed mayhem.

The entire concept behind Noises Off is, of course, to send up the typical country-house play and the rather naff actors who choose to take part in it, while focusing on the idea that there are no characters more interesting than those who try to portray other characters themselves.

Actors are by nature dramatic, and Frayn uses this to his advantage. Stephen Oliver’s Lloyd Dallas is the typical womanising director, having relationships with both Poppy and Brooke, while Paris’s jealous Garry Lejeune has flaming rows with the increasingly-irritable Dotty.

Noises Off was a great farce

It is not as easy as one might imagine for an actor to play another actor – essentially sending up themselves, or at least a stereotype of themselves.

Lejeune cannot express himself very well, and Paris turned him into just the right bundle of emotions, while Dotty despairs and gets snappy as her loss of patience and age start to affect her performance – a part which March did incredibly well.

Caruana’s portrayal of the ditzy, blonde Brooke, forever lost in a world of her own and losing her contact lenses constantly while unable to improvise, was very funny. Debono’s veteran actor and alcoholic Slesdon Mowbray, who was often wandering off and missing his cues, was a spot-on interpret-ation of an ageing figure of both endearment and frustration.

Said’s rather forceful but well-intentioned Belinda Blair tries to smoothe things over with everyone but doesn’t manage to protect poor Frederick Fellowes’s sensitive nature from the wrath of the jealous Lejeune and the unintentional flirting of Dotty, who likes the attention.

Long-suffering crew members, the sarcastic but patient Tim filling in for actors who have missed their cues, and the retiring and efficient Poppy were portrayed with strong knowledge of their setbacks by Camilleri and Rizzo.

Confusion arises particularly in the second scene – the one set backstage as the show gets started. This happens mostly in snatched whispers and silent gestures, leading to the characters arguing, chasing and backstabbing one another and generally behaving badly backstage before putting on their stage faces and trying to work against the odds.

The timing and dynamics for this to work were truly commendable and the perfect choreography, and blocking of the whole piece was a tour de force of the cast’s skills and of the director and light designer Anthony Bezzina.

A play like this could not have been staged so very well without its own backstage crew and technical team, with set dressers and property assistants Lisa Cassar and Shirley Pisani, backstage crew Anthony Borg and Vanessa Debattista, stage-managed by Christian Mifsud and deputy Marlene Lanzon; with Marvic Sultana as lighting technician and sound in the able hands of Digital Magic.

The backstage set alone was complicated enough because it was meant to look haphazard but designed for easy rotation to the more elaborate set fronting the audience.

Naturally meant to take place in a theatre, Noises Off appealed to the acting crowd because of their own inside knowledge of the workings of stage, but was a great farce in itself and was greatly enjoyed by the general audience too.

It was an excellent choice of play for Masquerade to launch mid-season and definitely one which will draw in the crowds, due both to its clever script balanced by elements of slapstick and physical humour making it big on energy while cashing in on the laughter.

• Noises Off is also being staged on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 7.30pm. Tickets may be obtained online from www.teatrumanoel.com.mt or by calling 2124 6389.