With so many family members who – unbelievably – had still never seen Noises Off, we had a big trip up to London to catch the last night of the current run of Lindsay Posner’s new production of this classic comedy – and it was worth every penny and every minute. I’m sure you know the premise; TV star Dotty Otley has sunk her money into a touring production of Robin Housemonger’s latest sex comedy, Nothing On, opening tomorrow night at the Grand Theatre Weston-super-Mare. Unfortunately, they’re all a bit behind with their rehearsals.
So Act One of Noises Off is the dress rehearsal of Act One of Nothing On; Act Two is backstage during the midweek matinee at the Theatre Royal, Goole, a few weeks later; and Act Three is the last night of the tour at the Municipal Theatre, Stockton on Tees. Although everyone is sweetness and light at the beginning (apart from the super-stressed director), it doesn’t take long for relationships to become a little strained; and when one member of the cast gets jealous of the attention paid to others, it becomes too much to bear.
There’s so much to enjoy in the show. The mistimed curtain announcements. The dilemma of too many sardines. Lost contact lenses. Sudden nosebleeds. Stuck doors. Tied laces. Concealed whisky bottles. It’s a never ending list. I’ve now seen Noises Off five times over the decades, and I challenge anyone to come up with a funnier individual Act within a play certainly over the last forty years than Act Two of Noises Off. You inevitably end up with your eyes streaming with happy tears and your voice hoarse from cackling. You also think you’ve always seen the best ever cast – until the next time you see it.
This delightful production has a cast to die for. Felicity Kendal brings all her immaculate comic timing to the role of Dotty Otley, unable to tell her newspaper from her sardines, mouthing obscenities at other cast members and truly nailing the killer lines that Michael Frayn provides her. Alexander Hanson is fantastic as director Lloyd, again with brilliant timing, wonderfully tired with not only this ghastly play but life in general. Joseph Millson gives us a superb physical comedy performance as the neurotic and furious Garry, with some amazing pratfalls and vocal athletics. Matthew Kelly is joyfully doddery as the oft-inebriated Selsdon, Jonathan Coy beautifully brings out all Freddie’s anxieties and I don’t think I’ve ever seen the role of Belinda Blair played with such inventive humour as here by Katherine Kingsley. In fact, occasionally one can feel that Act Three is a tiny bit of 
an anti-climax after the high octane hilarity of the middle act – but not a bit of it here, I’ve never seen Act Three played so brilliantly.
The production has already had a brief UK tour before hitting the West End, and will be returning for a new tour later this year. Considering the whole genre of the sex comedy is pretty much a thing of the past, it’s amazing how fresh and recognisable the comedy is. Should be compulsory viewing for everyone! A sheer delight from start to finish.
Production photos by Nobby Clark
Five Alive, Let Theatre Thrive!
Thomas Muschamp’s The Killing Game was an intriguing thriller with a military air; it had something of the Conduct Unbecoming to it, if you remember that old play. Given the fact that he apparently wrote dozens of plays, Mr Muschamp’s oeuvre seems to be largely forgotten today. I remember this as being a riveting and exciting drama that kept me guessing throughout. An excellent cast but I particularly remember Hannah Gordon being superb.
Another two-show day, this started off with Ned Sherrin and Caryl Brahms’ musical about the six Mitford sisters, the socialite, not socialist, family who got in with the Mosleys and the Hitlers and suchlike in the first half of the twentieth century. Nicely done, but it left me a bit cold – although, maybe that was the point? A great cast starred Patricia Hodge, with terrific stalwarts including Gay Soper and Julia Sutton – not to mention Oz Clarke. It even had “dances supervised” (whatever that means) by Anton Dolin. I remember feeling grateful that I had another show to go on to; and, indeed, it didn’t last long in the West End.
John Wells’ Chequers-based farce was a complete hoot, with a fantastic central performance by Angela Thorne as Maggie Thatcher, although I always found John Wells’ own impersonation of Denis as rather over the top.
I still cringe when I think of the publicity photo with Ms Thorne and Mr Wells and the real Thatchers – Denis obviously found it hilarious, but The Iron Lady had a smile full of individually gritted teeth.
On a second two-show day, I first saw Mark Medoff’s stunning play about a relationship between two members of staff at a school for the deaf, which garnered several awards on both sides of the Atlantic. The main roles were taken by the deaf actor Elizabeth Quinn and the hearing actor – and Shoestring himself – Trevor Eve. I remember it as a gripping and riveting watch, chock-full of terrific performances, and indeed it was later made into a very successful film.
The Palace Theatre is an awfully big place when there aren’t that many people in the audience so this third night performance of Colin Welland’s amusing but overwhelmingly alarming play about teachers coping with life as teachers and homophobic bullying amongst the boys felt a bit surreal. Primarily I went to see it because I wanted to see what Windsor Davies was like on stage – and he was brilliant. I remember him rousing up the first few rows of the stalls so that we all stood up to sing a hymn just before the curtain fell for the interval. Enjoyable, but I was expecting more. Also appearing as members of staff were Shaun Curry, Bernard Gallagher and Clive Swift, and amongst the boys, Nick Conway went on to have a very successful acting (and teaching) career.
A farce by Monty Python alumnus Eric Idle, and with a massive cast headed by William Rushton, John Fortune and Peter Jones, directed by Jonathan Lynn, should have been a thing of joy. But I remember it as being sadly shallow and full of horribly easy laughs, and, whilst it was certainly superficially funny at times, it didn’t have anything like enough oomph to become memorable. Can’t win them all – my next four shows were all sensational.
I saw this with my friend Ian – I’m not quite sure why he wanted to see it, but I’m glad he convinced me. Adapted by Tom Stoppard from Johann Nestroy’s 1842 comedy Einen Jux will er sich machen, which was also adapted into The Matchmaker and Hello Dolly, this was a brilliantly funny farce with maniacally lively characters, a superb script and some fantastic performances – Ray Brooks, Felicity Kendal, Dinsdale Landen, Joan Hickson, and above all, Michael Kitchen who was on fire for this show. 
A farce of mistaken identities, romantic entanglements, an actress playing a boy and anything else Stoppard and Nestroy could chuck at it. I note that of the three child actors playing the Ragamuffin, one of them was Adam Woodyatt (aka Ian Beale). As Michael Kitchen said many times during this show: In a word, classic.
A preview production of the show that has never really gone away since. Frank Loesser’s magnificent musical based on the writings and characters of Damon Runyon is full of the stuff of legend – and this incredible production by Richard Eyre quickly entered the annals of history as being Of The Best. I’ll never forget the audience erupting with ecstasy at David Healy’s finest career moment – his performance of Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat – so much so that Harry Towb, who had the next line as Lieutenant Branigan, simply gave up waiting to deliver it and joined the audience in demanding a reprise. With a dream team four main actors of Julia McKenzie, Julie Covington, Ian Charleson and Bob Hoskins, supporting cast including Barrie Rutter, John Normington and a young Imelda Staunton, this was always going to be one of the best shows anyone was ever likely to see. This production fired up some controversy along the lines of “should the subsidised theatre be creating commercial productions like this that could stand on their own two feet on Shaftesbury Avenue?” When it was a production of this quality, the answer was, unquestionably, yes.
Julian Mitchell’s astonishing play about two social outsiders growing up in the public school system ran for ages and remains a landmark production, not only because it’s a riveting play, but because of the two young stars that were made from it – Rupert Everett in his first West End role and Kenneth Branagh, straight out of RADA. It wasn’t difficult to tell that these two would set the world on fire. Inspired by the real life story of Guy Burgess, the play went on to become a very successful film and is often revived. Another highly memorable and electric theatrical experience.
Michael Frayn’s best known play had been running for just two weeks at the Savoy Theatre when I saw it, and since then I must have seen it at least another three or four times! A classic farce of backstage shenanigans with a hopeless cast rehearsing a dreadful sex comedy – and we see the first act of this awful play three times from three different perspectives and at three different points of its disastrous tour. One of the funniest plays around – and it still packs them in wherever it plays. With a superb original cast of Paul Eddington, Patricia Routledge, Nicky Henson, Roger Lloyd Pack and many more blistering names – just sensational.
Some shows never go away. Sometimes that can be regrettable; sometimes remarkable; on a few occasions, totally wonderful. Noises Off, I’m delighted to say, falls into that third category. Michael Frayn’s marvellous farce, that never progresses our hapless cast of TV B-listers past the first act of Robin Housemonger’s clearly pathetic Nothing On, stars TV’s Dotty “I can ‘ardly ‘old me lolly up” Otley – and she’s sunk her life savings into this “investment”. Will she get a return on her risk? Will she buffalo.
