Noises Off

Noises Off is a farce about farce, taking the clichés of the genre and shaking them inventively through a series of kaleidoscopic patterns.

The play opens with a touring company dress-rehearsing Nothing On, a conventional farce. Mixing mockery and homage, Frayn heaps into this play-within-a-play a hilarious melee of stock characters and situations. Never missing a trick, it has as its first act a pastiche of traditional farce; as its second, a contemporary variant on the formula; as its third, an elaborate undermining of it. Caricatures - cheery char, outraged wife and squeaky blonde - stampede in and out of doors. Voices rise and trousers fall ... a farce that makes you think as well as laugh.