Date: Fri 17-Sep-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: SHIRLE

Quick Words:

Polka-Dot-Noises-Neuberger

Full Text:

THEATRE REVIEW: "Noises Off" At Its Nutty Best

(with cut)

By Julie Stern

BRIDGEPORT -- Things are happening in Bridgeport these days. We went down to

Harbor Yard last month to take in our first Bluefish game. There in the shadow

of the Amtrak siding where the commuters waved and an enthusiastic engineer

blasted his horn in recognition of a timely play in the outfield, we lost our

hearts to the Fish.

Now we've been to the newly re-opened, lavishly refurbished Polka Dot

Playhouse. The playhouse has moved into a former bank building at the heart of

State Street, around the corner from The Barnum Museum, and offers with free

secured parking in the People's Bank lot. We were at the playhouse last

weekend to take in its season opener, Michael Frayn's Noises Off .

Done at its best, Noises Off is a piece of inspired lunacy. The Bridgeport

production, sparked by Newtown resident Jan Neuberger, is simply the nuts. For

anyone who hasn't seen it before, the plot revolves around a company of actors

who are touring the English provinces with a really awful play.

In the first act, the harried director is trying steer the cast through the

last minute dress-technical rehearsal of Act I of "Nothing On," a farce

revolving around a supposedly empty house and the various people who try to

take advantage of it, from the housekeeper who wants to enjoy the color TV to

the realtor who wants to seduce a young babe, from the owners who have sneaked

back into the country while pretending, for tax purposes, to reside in Spain

to an aging burglar.

There are many strategically located doors, a disappearing plate of sardines,

rubber cement, and a tendency for the men to lose their pants. Lloyd, the

director, must coax them towards mastery of all these props while defusing

various interpersonal conflicts that threaten to upset the flow.

By the second act the play is one month into its tour and the audience gets to

view the same opening act of the farce from the perspective of backstage. As

the characters rush frantically up and down the rickety tangle of scaffolding

that enables them to make their timely entrances and exits, their personal

problems have escalated: Lloyd is trying to balance simultaneous affairs with

the dim-witted babe and the tightly wired property mistress; the realtor is in

love with the housekeeper and is consumed with jealousy when she develops an

interest in the pedantically anxious master of the house. And everyone knows

that they have to keep the burglar away from the booze or else...

The third act returns to the audience's perspective. It is still Act I of the

farce, three weeks later, and the actors are now so out of sorts they totally

wreck the play with forgotten lines, missed cues, and slippery sardines

everywhere...

It takes really good acting to make all this work, and Polka Dot has assembled

a cast of Equity professionals who know how to do it. Director Brian Feehan

puts them through their slapstick paces with impeccable timing, but at the

same time the actors come to life as convincing personalities behind the

hackneyed types they are supposed to be portraying.

From the wheedling conniving of Norman Allen as Selsdon, the irrepressible old

drunk, to the striking presence of Katrina Ferguson as Belinda, the mistress

of the house, who tries to keep a lid on the dissension, to Ms Neuberger's

rubber-legged mugging as Dotty the housekeeper who is flattered to have the

attentions of two men willing to fight for her, the cast keeps the audience

howling with laughter.

The theater is beautiful, the seats are comfortable, the prices are a lot

lower than you'd pay in any other city, and this show is definitely worth

going to see -- and to take your kids to (middle school on up).

(The Polka Dot Playhouse, on State Street, can be reached at 333-3666.

Performances of Noises Off continue through October 16, with curtains Thursday

through Saturday evenings and Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Single tickets

range from $18 to $25.)