Theater Review—

No Mis-Steps By The Little Players In Frayn’s Comic Farce

By Julie Stern

Noises Off has gained a well-earned reputation as one of the funniest plays in modern times. Michael Frayn’s comic farce about a harried director and his bumptious troupe of actors trying to put on a third rate play at a string of seaside resorts uses the gimmick of showing the same story from both sides of the curtain.

The Town Players of Newtown have selected this story as the opening offer for this, their 71st anniversary season.

First act is a demented dress rehearsal in which the actors attempt to master their lines and movements, while struggling with their personal issues. Freddy can’t play his part until he has a complete psychological exegesis of why he is supposed to do something; Brooke can’t keep her contacts in her eyes and can’t see when they fall on the floor; Garry can’t complete his sentences, but feels the need to interrupt the flow of the action in order to say something. Belinda is fascinated by gossip and feels the need to report on Garry’s affair with Dotty, Lloyd’s thing with Poppy, and Selsdon’s alcohol problem.

Act two is set backstage. The show has been running for a month, and the performers’ romantic entanglements have escalated.

While the audience can hear the lines of the same vacuous play being spoken, the people we can see (in their offstage positions) are caught up in an increasingly frantic set of jealous conflicts, carried out in pantomime (so as not to drown out the speeches).

As the characters stumble through the myriad doors that control the plot of the farce, they chase each other with axes and plates of sardines before heading back through a different door to resume their role.

The final act represents the last night of the season, and once again the audience is facing the stage. However, the mounting personal tensions have so exploded that they all get their lines wrong, miss their cues, and make a total disaster of the whole endeavor.

The humor of the play lies in the timing. All farces depend on people disappearing through doors and appearing again, at just the right or wrong moment. In this play the whole process races out of control, to the dismay of the director and the stage managers, while the actors try bravely to muddle through, speaking the lines they know, even as the ship is going down.

One of the noticeable things about The Town Players’ production of the play is that the entire cast has learned their long and difficult parts extremely well, performing with no stumbling or mis-steps, even as they play performers who were stumbling all over the place.

Damian Long was particularly droll and convincing as Lloyd, the director, who is having affairs with two of the women in the company, while juggling productions of this farce and Richard III. Marie Rowe is funny as the aging star of the company, who plays the maid and has a lot to do with a plate of sardines.

Timothy Huebenthal is convincing as the mealy mouthed Garry, and Denise Milmerstadt does a fine job with the part of the air-headed Brooke.

Daniel J. Mulvihill is touchingly persistent as the anxious Freddy, Suzanne Kinnear is a warm mother hen as Belinda, who never gets mad at anyone. Alexis M. Vournazos is wonderfully long-suffering as Tim the stage manager who has to step in at a moment’s notice to play the part of anyone who is missing, drunk, blind or fainting.

Kristi McKeever is highly believable as the anxious assistant stage manager, who is… well… ummmm (well, she’s been getting it on with Lloyd, so you can figure out what she is), and Ron Malyszka does his usual turn as the unreliable Selsdon Mowbray, who might be all right if you keep him away from the booze.

The play should resonate with anyone who has ever  been involved with community theater. It is a bit long, but fortunately the improved seats at the little theatre are a lot more comfortable than they used to be.

(Performances continue Friday and Saturday evenings until May 27, and there is a matinee scheduled for Sunday, May 21.

The Little Theater, on Orchard Hill Road in Newtown, can be reached at 270-9144 for reservations or additional information.)