St Peter’s Civic Hall, Carmarthen
Wed 27 July
Michael Frayn’s 1982 play within a play, Noises Off, is notoriously one of the hardest comedies to stage. Act 1 begins with a late-night technical rehearsal of Nothing On – a bawdy, sardine-obsessed farce of slamming doors and mistaken identity. Frayn, between forgotten lines and missed cues, establishes the friendships, affairs and vices of the cast, showing two very different personas: the on-stage characters and their off-stage alter-egos. In Act 2, on tour one month later, the good humour in the cast has gone and all the personal intrigue has taken over the plot. Frayn’s light-bulb moment came while watching one of his own plays from the wings. He decided it was “funnier from behind than in front” and set Act 2 backstage. The entrances become exits, the action you see out front is a manic mime while the lines from Act 1 are bellowed off-stage.
The third act catches-up with the tour in its final throws. Back on stage, Nothing On, has become a shambles but, after hearing the script twice already, the audience now knows what to expect. Frayn ingeniously plays against expectations in a glorious pay-off that sees all the props come and go at the wrong times. The actors take it in turns to manfully struggle on with the script or break character completely to find a way out.
Last week, Just Good Friends’ production of Noises Off, in Carmarthen’s St Peter’s Civic Hall, showed how to pull-off such a challenging show with real flair. The complicated script was navigated with ease and the audience were treated to a performance that built beautifully to an hilarious climax. Newcomer Benjamin Smith made an excellent debut as Garry & Roger capturing the overblown, farcical tone of the production with a physical and perfectly timed performance. Under the direction of Siân Morris, the company’s regular stalwarts found double entendres where Frayn himself didn’t know he’d written them. The clarity of the characters’ different accents, mannerisms and tell-tale ticks made it a joy to see the cast multi-roling, a real reward for an audience who were led skillfully through the deliberate confusions of the rapidly unravelling plot.
Next year the company will be taking on Spamalot. The Monty Python musical is a satirical send-up of the Broadway behemoths its writer, Eric Idle, hates to love, which goes to show that there is a lot of mileage in seeing the bones of the theatre being laid bare in front of a knowing audience. Or, that people just love to see a show with a missing plate of sardines, or better still, a fish-slap in the face.
words JOHN-PAUL DAVIES