Tag Archives: Michael Frayn

Noises Off, Theatre Review. The Arts Centre, Liverpool

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Caitlin Clough, Jack Murray, Karl Falconer, Rhea Little, Sam Walton, Stewart McDonald, Abi Taylor Jones, Siobhan Crinson, Albert Hastings.

Quite simply you can never have too much of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off placed before you. It is a sumptuous comedy banquet that keeps giving and each serving is captured differently as the last. It is rightly regarded as one of the finest stage comedies of its time but it has to be captured right, one person miscast, one mistimed moment and the momentum goes completely. It is a play that is so giving and yet one wrong step, it can be a cruel mistress and leave the feeling of undiluted suffering in the audience and it takes real guts to even attempt to put it on. Thankfully PurpleCoat productions weren’t put off by the thought and gave a performance of high ability and virtue at the Arts Centre on Myrtle Street.

Noises Off, Theatre Review. The Lowry, Salford.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Maureen Beattie, Neil Pearson, David Bark-Jones, Thomasin Rand, Danielle Flett, Chris Larkin, Sasha Waddell, Simon Bubb, Geoffrey Freshwater.

What Noises Off brings to the stage, is the sense of what regional theatre really is like, fly by the seats mayhem, utter confusion and misunderstanding and above all just the most amazing and side splittingly funny couple of hours you can ever hope to have in a theatre.

The Lowry in Salford is the latest venue to host Michael Frayn’s incredible farce and with a cast that you just want to carry on forever, causing mayhem and theatrical anarchy as they go.