Noises Off review: a first-rate staging of a masterpiece

“Thank heavens for Michael Frayn and his restoratively silly play Noises Off,” said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. This sublime “metafarce” – about a troupe of frazzled actors touring a terrible sex comedy called Nothing On – gives us a play that goes wrong three times: first in rehearsal, then as seen from backstage, and then in a final performance in which the whole thing disintegrates. In Lindsay Posner’s “superior” West End revival, there’s a “sense – spurred by the pandemic? – of top-rank stage-actors relishing the deranging peculiarity of their profession”. Felicity Kendal is “adorably on song” as the veteran TV actress Dotty, who plays the part of a doddery housekeeper, and who “lives up to her name with every fluffed line and bungled action”. But Kendal’s is just one of a raft of pitch-perfect performances.

As the “alpha male” leading man, Joseph Millson delivers a “spring-loaded” masterclass in physical comedy, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. Jonathan Coy, Alexander Hanson, Tracy-Ann Oberman and Matthew Kelly are also all excellent. There’s an argument that Noises Off gets revived too often. This latest staging, which began on tour last year, is the fourth big London production this century. Yet when this “engine of joy” is fired up with such “precision wallop” – this is “as good a revival as I’ve seen of one of the funniest plays” ever written – who cares? “Too much of a good thing? Pah! What nonsense. What glorious nonsense.”

As a farce that satirises and celebrates a now largely forgotten type of farce, Noises Off is “definitely showing its age”, said Patrick Marmion in the Daily Mail. One of the gags makes “reference to Dame Myra Hess (a once famous, fag-puffing pianist, M’Lud) playing on through the air raids”. Yet even if it creaks, it also “crackles” with comedic genius. This is a first-rate staging of a masterpiece, said Sarah Crompton on What’s On Stage. “The entire thing breezes away the January blues with glorious brilliance. It is an utter treasure.”

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Phoenix Theatre, London WC2 (0333-009 6690); thephoenixtheatre.co.uk. Until 11 March