By BRUCE DENNILL
Noises Off / Directed by Chris Weare / Pieter Toerien’s Montecasino Theatre, Fourways, Johannesburg
The technical demands of a well-written farce, in which an entire ensemble needs to act more or less as a single flowing, door-slamming organism in order to allow all the comedic marks to be hit, generally require a reasonable amount of experience on the part of the cast if the production is to be a success. Alternatively, said demands can be set as the aspirational bar for a less experienced cast to aim at, with a successful outcome being both hugely entertaining for an audience and tremendously instructive in the development of the actors’ skillsets.
This LAMTA production sees second- and third-year students from the Cape Town academy, augmented by professional actors Aidan Scott and Natalie Robbie, step up confidently to the plate to make the latter of the above scenarios an hilarious reality. That the youngsters have the discipline and stamina – it’s a two hour-plus, three-act piece – to hold the non-stop madness of the story together is testament to director and LAMTA teacher Chris Weare.
The action involves a play within a play, with a troupe of actors trying (and largely failing) to get through a dress rehearsal of a sex farce called Nothing On while exasperating their director (Scott) and revealing possible romantic connections between some of the actors in the company (that is, the actor characters, not the actors themselves…). Then, via clever set work, the audience is taken backstage during a performance of the same play in which the company’s fraying relationships are revealed and further elaborated upon, with the onstage action now taking place offstage. All of the tension culminates in a third act in which the play (within the play, not the one you bought a ticket for) inevitably becomes too much to handle, meaning the actors (both the actor/characters and the actor/actors) have to scramble to cover the cracks.
Got it?
The precision of playwright Michael Frayn’s writing means that the pace is unrelenting and the comic cues are – once you have become used to the stop-start action being not only part of the piece but the way the play works – insistent and inevitable. And the overall arc of the narrative, which sees the audience knowing what is going to happen in the story but never sure of exactly how it’ll happen with each new perspective, means engagement with the action is easy, despite the frenetic craziness.
Scott’s unravelling, problematically over-invested director Lloyd Douglas is excellent, with Michelle Juncker’s turn as Flavia Brent just the right sort of over the top. As the agitated actor Garry Lejeune, Benjamin Stannard’s clipped, beautifully phrased dialogue is one of the most consistent laugh-getters in the show. In contrast, another character’s heavy, earthy accent rather obscures his punchlines, one of the few aspects of a collective performance that could perhaps use a touch of polish.
Noises Off has lost none of its comedic spark in the over four decades since it was first staged, and this young cast handles its substantial complexities with aplomb, presenting both the story and the craft involved to a new generation.