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If you love pinball machines, Russian Matryoshka dolls, synchronized sports and farce, then "Noises Off!" is your kind of play. It also helps if you like sardines, and the endless slamming of doors.
The best-known creation of English playwright Michael Frayn, this 1982 stage comedy perhaps plays best to a generation of theater fans who still find the sight of dropped trousers laugh-out-loud hilarious. However, not even the yellowing pages of dated humor here and there can dim the farce's formidable powers.
For like pinball machines, Russian Matryoshka dolls and synchronized sports, this "play within a play" is a sheer marvel of theatrical engineering. Lines of dialogue bounce off each other, parallel stories collide to comic effect, and timing is everything. Put simply, respect is due to any playwright who can pull off all three elements at once.
That it's also funny makes Frayn something of a show-off. Given the weight of farce on continual display throughout its three acts, those new to the playwright may find it odd that this is the same man behind the earnest stage drama "Copenhagen," about physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, not to mention esteemed English translations of Anton Chekov's plays.
Utah Shakespeare Festival's production knows that, while the play's rapid-fire scenes make "Noises Off!" notoriously difficult to synchronize, its dramatic nuances must still find life between pauses of madness and outright bedlam. The cast here fulfills both requirements, and it's a safe bet that the split-second timing on display will ferment into greater precision with every passing performance.
You don't have to watch "Noises Off!" with the eye of a scientist to see that the whole of Frayn's career makes its own kind of sense. Its precision speaks for itself, as do the subtle laughs reminiscent of Chekov that show through the play's peaks of boffo humor.
The comedy features a cast of nine who play seven characters rehearsing "Nothing On." This means that each actor on the roster gets three separate names: that of the real-life actor, the name of their character in "Noises Off!," plus the name of that character's character in "Nothing On."
Only the director character of Lloyd Dallas, played by Ben Livingston, and two stage managers, played by Iran Durant and Betsy Mugavero, get by with just one character name. Even the slyly named Robin Housemonger, credited as the playwright of "Nothing On," shows that Frayn doesn't exempt himself from the fun and games.
And fun and games is what this play is all about, even if "Noises Off!" relies on the old comic engine of love triangles and jealousy to get its ball truly rolling. It's also not every theater day that you get the novel sight of "director" Dallas shouting directions from his seat in the audience.
Or for that matter, a double playbill, including credits for the fictional Grand Theatre — in Weston-Super-Mare — for its production of "Nothing On."
While "Noises Off!" demands your full attention, it's the sort of demand best compared to accepting free money. Like a wind-up toy, the work almost plays itself. There are no weighty themes to detect, no character development to debate with your friends afterward and certainly nothing so old-fashioned as some sort of allegory holding it together. It makes perfect sense, then, that the festival programming powers selected Frayn's comic masterpiece as a book-end to Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie."
Not that the play leaves emotion at the door, but instead trades on lighter issues of frustration, exasperation and dizzying lunacy. If you haven't forgotten all your cares by the time Garry Lejeune (Roger Tramplemain in "Nothing On"), played nearly note-perfectly by Quinn Mattfeld, careens down a flight of stairs in the unhinged third act, you're probably beyond therapy.
Livingston also gives a remarkable turn as "director" Dallas, balancing the demands of not just Brooke Ashton (Vicki in "Nothing On"), played by Ally Carey, and stage manager Poppy Norton-Taylor, played by Betsy Mugavero, but his entire at-wits-end cast.
Yes, Dallas tells them, sometimes the world itself hinges on nothing less than slamming doors and plates of sardines. What exasperates and exhilarates us — in theater just as in life — is that small things can become big things, just as big things can shrink into insignificance.
"That's farce! That's theater! That's life!" he tells them. "Why does anyone do anything? … The wellsprings of human action are deep and cloudy."
In a play where coordinated group effort is everything, it's almost criminal to single out certain actors or scenes from Wednesday's opening performance at the Randall L. Jones Theatre. By the time you've finished laughing, your mind turns to awe and appreciation for how the cast pulled it all off.
If there's any complaint, it's that Frederick Fellows (Philip Brent in "Nothing On"), played by Ron Thomas, could have sported some convincing blood during his many nose bleeds. Then again, in this play-within-play about the making of theatrical art, you can never have too many plates of sardines.
USF's "Noises Off!"
Bottom line • A rollicking comedy on three levels — rehearsal, back-stage and boffo performance — that's the perfect antidote to the Utah Shakespeare Festival's more serious offerings.
When • Reviewed July 6; continues through Oct. 22; plays at 2 and 8 p.m. in repertory with Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" and Meredith Willson's "The Music Man"; and three Shakespearean plays, "Richard III," "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Romeo and Juliet."
Where • Utah Shakespeare Festival, 351 W. Main St., Cedar City
Tickets • $22-$71 at 800-PLAYTIX or http://www.bard.org
Running time • Two hours and 45 minutes, with one intermission and one pause for scene change.
Also • The festival offers ticketed backstage tours and free daily literary and production seminars, play orientations, exhibits and green shows.