NOISES OFF Cambridge Arts Theatre
It opened with a wonderful set. ,delightful music and a feeling of confident gentility. A keen audience packed the Arts Theatre. And we were delighted to have Felicity Kendal, possibly Britain’s most winsome working actress, up there on stage playing the part of a dizzy forgetful caretaker in Michael Frayn’s formidable farce. Noises Off - sixty years after it first took to the stage.
The plot was reassuringly familiar. - but soon revealed itself as anything but straightforward. In came Joseph Millson as Roger Tramlemain ,a fly estate Agent eager to show his companion beautiful VIcki played with stunning stage presence, by Sadie Frost .It is so long since it was first seen, we had all forgotten - or never knew- the twist. Suddenly a booming theatrical male voice cut through poor Dotty’s monologue with an exasperated shouty command . It took a moment to realise this was not a member of the public but part of the play. Alexander Hanson as Lloyd Dallas stole the show more than once with his overbearing educated interjections. Noises Off is after all, as we remember a play within a play. And the characters in ‘Nothing On’ a comedy by Robin Housemonger are all also playing their own roles in Michael Frayn’s minutely plotted masterpiece.
Confused? Last night’s audience were - and lapped up every minute. This is double entertainment after all. But also the kind of hard to follow intricacy people love. Act One is hilarious, As the expansive and delightful Joseph Millson plans to have a sexy fun afternoon with the gorgeous Brooke Ashton in the bedroom of a house on his list , the owners suddenly return, shades of Ben Jonson here , from tax exile in Spain. Tracy-Ann Obermann was Belinda Blair the impossibly glamorous and magnetically confident wife of nervous Nellie, Frederick Fellowes - played with comic precision by Jonathan Coy. Matthew Kelly comes on as a burglar - a character pretty close to his ‘real life’ persona the elusive alcoholic Selsdon Mowbray. He was sensational as both.
Act Two goes backstage and the the two plays merge : the action descends into slapstick where the characters play themselves as fictions of Michael Frayn’s fevered imagination.
It is not hard to believe that Frayn worked as a code breaker in the second world war for which job he had to learn Russian.
Complex, bewildering but dashed off with panache by a cast of experienced celebrity actors - and supporting cast of clever newcomers like Pepter Lunkuse, the hapless stage manager whose command of communications with the audience plummets as her fictional personal life takes over And Hubert Burton as Tim Allgood a young man who works tirelessly for the benighted company as they take their show from Weston Super Mare to Stockton on Tees, by which time, as he predict,s they are just about gibbering wrecks. Tim understudies brilliantly and Hubert Burton makes a marvellous job of a functional part.
Act Three is a full on farcical exhausting romp.
Experience extreme theatre in the clever and committed hands of some of the greats of theatre.
This farce is neither as simple nor as straightforward as we first imagined. And all the more satisfying for that.
