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Regional Reviews: St. Louis Noises Off Also see Richard's review of Myth of the Ostrich
Director Kelly also designed and worked as master carpenter on the gargantuan rotating set, which dominates the theater and the action, at least in its stagey grandeur, front and back. The results of it all are nearly impossible to describe, once the two hour and twenty minute show (with two intermissions) really gets going. Act one becomes a sort of hopeless stumble-through the night before opening, with everyone flummoxed by an impossible to stage farce. And it all takes on a deeper meaning here, the "impossible to stage farce," which you'll just have to figure out for yourself. Betsy Gasoske is comically heartwrenching as Dotty Otley, an actress who has put her own money into the show and who on stage plays the housekeeper of a famed playwright trying to evade his taxes in the UK. Ringing phones? Check! Too many sardines? Check! Not enough sardines? Check! Great props by Jadienne Davidson and Ken Clark? Double check! This version is slightly Americanized, though it's full of a comic dread, as "the show must go on" becomes an existential curse. In act one the actors-playing-actors drop their English characters in rehearsal and speak in American accents, trying to get through the "final dress" of Nothing On. I've seen Noises Off four different times, but this is the first time I've seen it with this combination of accents–which works out very well indeed. And later, act two, showing the backstage insanity, is done without any audible speaking at all, so the accents don't matter then. Noises Off premiered at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith, London in 1982 and subsequently ran for over 550 performances when it was revived a year later on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. It's blindingly fast and funny here, at the height of it all, with Joey Franks II as Garry, looking deep into the hideous pit of doom every fifteen minutes as farce turns into its own living monster. Garry is an estate agent who wants to use this playwright's country home for a tryst with Brooke (the great Kristin Meyer), but of course complications ensue very rapidly. Complications ensue, in fact, exponentially as the actors find they're all caught in one another's love triangles backstage and are reduced to bouncing around like some ghastly, murderous pachinko game in their freakishly complex group movement, at high speed, behind the scenes in act two. Jack Kalan gets credit for most of the fight choreography, of which there is a lot, and it moves quite rapidly. Ken Clark plays the director of Nothing On with a perfect Barrymore-like charm. Sarah Vallo is great as his long-suffering stage manager Poppy. Bradley Bliven is excellent as the overworked set builder and dogsbody Tim. And Kurt Knoedelseder is impossibly carefree as Selsdon, the hard-drinking actor playing a burglar on stage, but somehow possessing the silvery outline of an old song-and-dance man throughout. CJ Saenz is delightfully martyred as Freddie, playing Philip the playwright. As one of the actors, he's desperate to make this play-within-a-play come together somehow, and seems as perfectly choreographed as Fred Astaire in all the fast-paced action. Annalise Webb is first rate as Philip's wife Flavia in Nothing On, especially when everything goes insanely off-track. As Belinda Blair, she's the one who finally thrusts both hands into all the chaos with the nerve to–at least try to–make things strangely right for all of them, and their sardines, too. Mr. Franks is a master of knockabout comedy as Garry, the regular-guy actor playing the clever agent. A hundred or two years earlier, you'd have called Garry's character Rodger the "clever servant," I suppose. And it's brilliant, because (once again) you could easily imagine him in one of those 17th century French farces, when the genre entered its golden age. All of theatre seems like an ancient musical instrument, slumming it in the middle of the orchestra of life. But it picks up all sorts of fresh resonance under director Kelly. Don't ask me what they all wore, because it simply goes by in a blur. But I've nothing but the highest regard for costume designer Jean Heckmann (and I do seem to recall that Kristin Meyer looked fantastic in her second costume). And somehow, we truly believe that this same Kristin Meyer can fold her brain all the way inward, to play the dimwitted Vicki, Garry's date. Here, she has willed herself into becoming the perfect music hall bimbo, and a ferocious instrument, herself, in this great, mad machine. I never really realized how tricky all the lighting could be on this show till I saw the set's first revolve during the initial intermission–Eric Wennlund's lights are bright for comedy, but also perfectly bowed out overhead, over the audience, out of harm's way, as director Kelly's monolithic, slowly spinning set goes 'round in our faces, like a passing herd of elephants. It's just jaw-dropping madness. And my head was spinning for an hour afterward. Noises Off, produced by the Clayton Community Theatre, runs through February 8, 2026, at Washington University South Campus, 6501 Clayton Road, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.placeseveryone.org. Cast: Production Staff: |
