Review: Noises Off, The Old Vic, London, until Monday, March 12

by Keith Hunt

Need a lift from the economic gloom, dark mornings and inclement weather?

If so, head for London and take the perfect antidote - Michael Frayn's frantically funny Noises Off, which has recently opened at the Old Vic.

I was seeing the play for the third time, the last being several years ago, and can report that apart from losing the element of surprise, I found it just as eye-wateringly and side-splittingly hilarious.

The curious title refers to sounds created off stage that are heard during a play.

First performed nearly 30 years ago and gloriously revived by Lindsay Posner, is a play within a play and a farce about a farce.

The exasperated and, as we discover, priapic director Lloyd Dallas sums it up in workmanlike terms as "getting on, getting off, sardines and doors".

They all feature prominently throughout but it is about much more than that and packed with incident.

The play is about a chaotic touring theatre group performing the ambiguously titled Nothing On - a cue for trousers to be dropped and Amy Nuttall to parade around in her scanties as the cerebrally challenged Brooke Ashton, who has a habit of losing one of her contact lenses.

The part is usually played by a blonde, but the former Emmerdale star proves that redheads can be as delightfully dizzy. One of my favourite moments is in the final scene when she is the only one doggedly sticking to her lines as all around her disintegrates.

The first act shows the final rehearsal for the first night in Weston-super-Mare with the aptly named Dotty stumbling over whether she takes the sardines or leaves them and likewise the newspaper.

Putting her experience of such roles as Acorn Antiques to good use and excelling as the forgetful char, Celia Imrie asks the director (Robert Glenister) if she is getting her lines right. "Some of them have a familiar ring," comes the caustic reply.

Act two, seen from backstage, lays bare the tensions and traumas behind Lloyd's complicated love life at a matinee at Ashton-under-Lyne and is an essay in comic timing featuring swinging axes, whisky bottles and shoe laces tied together.

The latter has jealous Garry (Jamie Glover) kangarooing up and downstairs to hoots of laughter. In the final act when the play is nearing the end of its run in Stockon-on-Tees, he takes a spectacular fall, as it all goes excruciatingly wrong.

Karl Johnson as the boozy veteran actor playing a burglar, Janie Dee as gossipy Belinda Blair, Jonathan Coy as nosebleed-prone Freddy, Aisling Loftus as Poppy the sensitive assistant stage manager and Paul Ready as the put upon stage manager complete the stellar line-up.

At the end of it all the curtain literally comes down and we feel as spent as the cast look.