With a uniformly magnificent cast and a will to take Michael Frayn’s hilariously constructed farce, “Noises Off,” to its most precarious physical degree, director Hunter Foster escalates and escalates Frayn’s intrinsic mayhem until it erupts into unstoppable comic uproar that totally engulfs the Bucks County Playhouse stage and turns its audience hoarse from well-earned laughter.
Foster works shrewdly. He carefully builds on plot details, character traits, and alliances, both comradely and vengeful, among actors in a silly comedy touring the British hinterlands (“Nothing On” by the alleged Robin Housemonger) until the riled troupe is ready to sabotage their play and individual performances to exact pain on their suspected adversaries, even to the point of attempted murder.
The result is intricately choreographed pandemonium that draws intelligently from information we learn about characters and their off-stage lives and relationships and becomes funnier as those characters drop all pretense of fellowship and decorum to bedevil castmates they believe did them romantic dirt.
Snide innuendo spirals into fierce and dedicated retribution as the jealous and wounded play tricks, devise traps, and directly assault one another. Before one’s eyes, benign hurt turns into active hatred while pratfalls that come from dodging a punch or slipping on an intentional greased stair evolve into a brilliantly executed collection of splits, stumbles, collisions, and one body sailing over the back of another body.
The beauty of Foster’s production is the eventual all-out war among “Nothing On” castmates emanates from subtlety that enhances the raucous comedy to ensue. “Noises Off” begins as a send-up of a second-rate company going through the pangs of a dreadful tech rehearsal in which lines and stage business remain unlearned and some cast members have inane questions about motivation their director, Lloyd (John Patrick Hayden), deftly and self-satisfactorily field. It graduates in later acts from a satire of the theater to a full-blown farcical free-for-all.
Also, Frayn endows his characters with various tics, speech patterns, peccadillos, and acting techniques that themselves create the basis for humor.
One actor has a constant yen for liquor, and the others strive to keep all booze away from him. Another actor keeps interrupting rehearsal with inconsequential concerns he can’t articulate, reverting to a vague “you know” and “that sort of thing” to make his point. A third actor, the sensible member of the cast, knows all of the gossip informing backstage intrigue and onstage deficiency. A fourth carries on valiantly with her lines and stage directions no matter what havoc occurs.
In the hands of Foster and his cast, these idiosyncrasies are not momentary devices. Foster makes the funny absolutely sidesplitting by having the quirks emerge at apt times throughout the show. These tiebacks underscore the brilliance of both the play and Foster’s production. Not only do you come to anticipate one character’s reaction to even hearing the word “blood” or another’s carelessness with her contact lenses, you respond more uproariously when they occur.
Best of all is the timing and choreography that goes along with the hijinks. The company treading carefully and examining the bottoms of their shoes to make sure a contact lens is not attached is priceless. The mechanics involved in keeping a whiskey bottle away from the drunk, a fire ax from getting in the hands one who aims to use it lethally, and three different bouquets of flowers, one actually a cactus, from someone for whom they’re not intended are as admirable in their design as they are rollicking as comedy.
None of this could have been so successful without the clockwork precision of an outstanding cast.
Their artistry is especially appreciated when one realizes they had only two weeks of rehearsal. Of course, when you have seasoned pros like Marilu Henner and Richard Kline among your cast, the experience sets an example. The wonder is, with all of the running upstairs, twirling around obstacles, dodging of blunt instruments, skirting the edges of scaffolding, tripping on wet floors, and coping with various plates of sardines, that anyone in the cast is alive and breathing by the end. I can’t imagine what it’s like for the company to do this show twice a day. Marilu Henner told me she wore her Fitbit to one rehearsal, and it revealed she’d climbed 62 flights!
Just at one rehearsal!
Foster’s cast dazzles. Because of the play-within-a-play format, each actor plays two parts, the actor performing in “Nothing On” and the character he or she is portraying. The amazing thing is the differentiation and clarity each performer manages. The built-in dual roles add to the fun.
For the second time in 2024 — the first was in George Street’s “Ibsen’s Ghost” — Jen Cody impresses with her easy, effortless combination of line delivery and physical comedy. Cody plays a famous British television actress who buys the rights to “Nothing On” to create a nest egg for her eventual retirement
While her character, Dolly Otley, seems confused by lines and blocking and takes most badly to being spurned by a younger castmate, Cody is in fine command of every aspect of her role. She is a natural comedian who can’t help generating laughs.
Marilu Henner is perfect as Belinda, the cast member who’s aware of every colleague’s troubles, calms tense situations, orchestrates campaigns to keep bottles and axes away from those who will use them for ill, and takes over when the final performance of “Nothing On” goes amok.
Henner is playing the same role she did in Peter Bogdanovich’s 1992 movie of “Noises Off,” and it’s a special treat seeing her assay it in person. The 32 years between Belindas doesn’t affect her a bit. If anything, she’s more active, more empathetic, and more involved than she was in Bodganovich’s version.
John Patrick Hayden skillfully treads the fine lines between both sarcasm and rudeness and exasperation and diplomacy as the put-upon director of “Nothing On,” who is not only frustrated by unheeded traffic management and endless worthless questions but who must referee among feuding cast members and negotiate his own torn-between-two-lovers dilemma.
Roe Hartrampf shows great wit as the dense juvenile lead, Gary Lejeune, handling both his character’s dimness and dozen pratfalls with equal aplomb. You can see Hartrampf’s instinct for comedy in every move, including the ones that look too dizzying to attempt in live theater.
Richard Kline, known best for playing Larry on all three iterations of “Three’s Company,” has impeccable timing and a canny knack for playing all the nuances of his character, Selsdon, the deaf, often late drunk who nonetheless knows his business once he gets onstage.
Amanda Jean Nichols is hilarious as Brooke, an actress who is like “Miss Birdseye,” one who locks in every line and every stage direction and cannot veer from them, even when improvisation as Henner’s Belinda or Hartrampf’s Gary pull off is desperately needed.
Barrett Riggins impresses as the beleaguered tech director and general male understudy who is called upon to accommodate the various ructions the “Nothing On” company causes. Folami Williams adeptly maneuvers between a trustworthy stage manager and a frantic spurned lover trying against odds to reveal a difficult situation she faces.
Anna Louizos’ sets, combining a standard British country house and the backstage of a theater, leave room for “Noises Off’s” mayhem while providing a lot of furniture to bump into, doors to enter, and flights of stairs. Jason Paul Tate deserves massive kudos for staging several fights. Nicole V. Moody’s costumes hit the right note for the characters of “Nothing On.” Kirk Bookman’s lighting captures so many tones and moods, it almost becomes a character in some scenes.
Noises Off, Bucks County Playhouse, 70 South Main Street, New Hope, Pennsylvania. Through Sunday, June 16, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. $32 to $78. www.bcptheater.org or 215-862-2121.
