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But in the case of Noises Off, Michael Frayn’s farce-within-a-farce that’s currently in production at Northern Stage’s Barrette Center for the Arts, in White River Junction, it’s a treat. The actors nail it, which is to say they butcher it, playing a far less able set of actors whose performances are so bad, so artfully and thoroughly bad, that they’re far more enjoyable than if they were good.
Tightly directed by Peter Hackett, Noises Off — which has been hailed by many people in the theater community as the “funniest comedy ever written” — portrays an incompetent stage troupe who stumble through three increasingly dysfunctional runs of Nothing On, a so-called “sex farce” that makes up in door-slamming what it lacks in narrative sense or style.
In the first of Noises Off’s three acts, we see the cast slogging through the dress rehearsal (or is it the technical?) until well after midnight, with hiccups popping up left and right. In the second act, set a month later, we see the same performance but from a perspective unfamiliar to most non-thespians — literally behind the scenes during the show, where the slapstick-y chaos that unfolds is even more absurdly farcical than the play the characters are putting on. Set designer Jordan Janota has outdone himself here, from the modernized Tudor-style interior of the English country home where Nothing On takes place, to the comparatively bare-bones flip side of the set that, as it rotates, exposes the mechanics and logistics of set designing itself.
The third act portrays the final performance in the Nothing On tour. The details are best left untold, but you can probably guess at how smoothly it goes.
Because there are multiple layers of theatrics at play in Noises Off/Nothing On, a run-through of the characters, and the characters’ roles, is probably in order:
There’s the aptly-named Dotty (Patti Perkins), a faded television actor who plays the role of the Brent family maid, Mrs. Clackett (or is it Sprotchett?), but can’t remember which props to hang on to and which props to set down. Perkins appeared this year in Jane Burgoyne, part of Northern Stage’s annual New Works Now festival.
Then there’s the sputteringly inarticulate Garry (David Mason), who instead of finishing a thought, trails off with a “you know…” and a helpless shrug of his shoulders. In Nothing On, Garry plays a real estate agent who is hoping to rent out the Brents’ house while they are off evading income taxes in Spain, and also use the house to seduce a woman named Vicki, played by the character Brooke, played with comedic verve by Emily Kron. Aside from acting the part of Vicki with all the subtlety and nuance of a Christmas ham, Brooke also happens to be virtually blind without her contact lenses, which she tends to lose inside her own eye.
Freddie (Mark Light-Orr) plays the homeowner Mr. Brent, who has worked himself up into a paranoid tizzy about the consequences of his tax evasion, though Brent’s panic is nothing compared to that of Freddie’s when he sees anything violent happen: He gets a nosebleed, then promptly retches at the sight of the blood. Freddie, though endearingly oblivious, might be in his own way the most self-aware character in the play: “You know how stupid I am about that sort of thing,” he acknowledges, brightly, throughout the technical rehearsal (or is it the dress?).
Mrs. Brent is played by Belinda (Susan Haefner), the cast gossip who is prone to overusing terms of endearment, and who also serves the handy role of explaining certain plot points, such as the trigger for Freddie’s nosebleeds, and the various romantic entanglements that turn to ax-wielding violence in Noises Off’s second act.
Capping off the Nothing On cast is Selsdon (Bill Kux), a well-loved but hard-of-hearing older fellow who, if he’s not bungling the timing of his break-in, has wandered off somewhere to hide or retrieve his precious fifth of booze. Offstage, there’s the poor stage manager Tim (Michael Hornig), who is sleep deprived to the point of delirium yet must rise to the occasion every time there’s a misstep, and assistant stage manager Poppy (Jenni Putney), who is essentially an open nerve ending with a fanny-pack.
Nothing On’s director, Lloyd Dallas, is played with exquisite, dear-god-why-me weariness by Jamie Horton. Unfortunately for Lloyd, his cast and crew can’t really follow instructions, or keep track of their props or costumes, or maintain any sense of timing, or get through a page of their script without giving him another gray hair.
But even as Dallas loses control over his own players, Noises Off director Peter Hackett manages the farce’s many moving parts — which include but are not limited to nine doors in varying states of disrepair, two love triangles, three burglar costumes, one imposter sheikh and many, many plates of sardines — with aplomb, striking the frenetic balance between well-tuned choreography and the appearance of total chaos.
The actors all share an easy, infectious chemistry, which might be in part because for some of them, this is not their first time working together at Northern Stage. Kron and Haefner were in Mary Poppins, Kux and Haefner were in A Christmas Carol, Putney and Mason were in Last of the Red Hot Lovers and Putney, Mason and Light-Orr were in Living Together.
Though Noises Off is Hornig’s first time acting at the Barrette Center, he’s a sales and marketing associate at Northern Stage and therefore no stranger to the company. He was magnetic and funny in his debut performance, and this hopefully won’t be the last we see of him.
At roughly 2 ½ hours including intermission, Noises Off is about as long as a Hollywood blockbuster, which is on the long side even for a serious play. The script doesn’t justify its length by being particularly substantive, and it certainly won’t give you much fodder for discussion on the way back home. But if you just want to leave this world for a while in favor of one that is simpler, sillier and far more full of sardines, it’s worth every meta-theatrical minute.
Northern Stage’s production of Noises Off, written by Michael Frayn and directed by Peter Hackett, runs through May 13 at the Barrette Center for the Arts, in White River Junction. For show times and to purchase tickets ($15 for students, $34-59 for adults) go to northernstage.org or call the box office at 802-296-7000.
EmmaJean Holley can be reached at ejholley@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.