Shortgrass Playhouse Inc. presents ‘Noises Off’

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Published on Wednesday, 22 February 2012 12:43

Shortgrass Playhouse, Inc. is proud to present the live performance of Noises Off, directed by Cherrel Davis.  Production dates are February 25-26 and March 3-4, 2012 at the Old City Hall Theatre in Hobart. Saturday performances are at 7 pm and Sunday matinees are set for 2 pm.  Adults tickets are $9.00, seniors $7.00, and students $5.00, which can be purchased at the door.

Noises Off is a 1982 play by English playwright Michael Frayn.  Called the funniest farce ever written, Noises Off presents a manic menagerie as a cast of itinerant actors rehearsing a flop called Nothing’s On.  The concept for this “play within a play” was born in 1970, when Frayn was standing in the wings watching a theatrical performance. Doors slamming, backstage intrigue, and an errant herring all figure in the plot of this hilarious and classically comic play.

The three acts of Noises Off expose different phases of the disastrous show, Nothing On.  Act One is about the dress rehearsal, and lampoons the common problems which typically occur during the rehearsal process: Forgetting your lines, second guessing your director, misplacing your props, missing your entrances, and falling in love with fellow cast members.

Act Two is about backstage antics, and takes place entirely backstage. The entire set is rotated to reveal the behind the scenes events. For anyone who has been backstage during a show - especially when something goes wrong, act two is bound to conjure a flood of hilarious memories. Despite the characters backstabbing one another, they somehow manage to get through their scene. But that’s not the case with the final act of the play. 

Act Three is when everything goes wrong!  In Act Three of Noises Off, the cast of Nothing On has been performing their show for nearly three months. They are seriously burnt out. By the play’s end, their show is a comical catastrophe -- and the audience is rolling in the aisles, loving every moment.

Pat Fite plays Lloyd Davis, the temperamental director of the play, “Nothing’s On”.  Leslea Tacker is Dotty Otley, an actress who is very forgetful, and the star of the Nothing On.  Sam Davidson portrays Garry Lejeune, a stuttering actor, whose speech affectations disappears onstage but is ever-present offstage.  David Webber is Timothy Allgood, an over-worked Stage Manager. Kristi Davidson is Brooke Ashton, a young inexperienced actress from London who pays no attention to other performers, and is always losing her contact lenses.  Chris Block portrays Frederick Fellows, an actor with a serious fear of violence and blood who often blames himself for things going wrong.  Becky Ross is the cheerful, sensible and reliable actress Belinda Blair.  Larry Willis is Selsdon Mowbray, an elderly alcoholic man who hides his bottles onstage, and Misti Reents completes the cast in her role as the emotional and over-sensitive Assistant Stage Manager Poppy Norton-Taylor.

This production is brought to you in part through state appropriations and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Oklahoma Arts Council.