Noises Off at Ferndale Rep

Michael Frayn is an unusual playwright. He began as a reporter and columnist, and has written several novels and books of philosophy, such as the nearly 500-page tome, The Human Touch, which I’ve actually read (encouraged by the San Francisco Chronicle, which paid me to do so.) Probably his most famous play is Copenhagen, a drama concerning two founders of quantum physics. His most recent plays are biographical and political, and he’s a well-regarded translator of Anton Chekhov.

 Then there are his comedies, one of which was so subtle that lead actor Ian McKellan didn’t realize it was supposed to be funny until opening night, when he heard the audience laughing. Noises Off however is anything but subtle, although Frayn maintains it is philosophical: he writes that it concerns the actors’ fear of facing the unrehearsed world outside the theatre.

 But like another British philosophical playwright—Tom Stoppard—Frayn found that philosophy goes over best on stage when it is expressed by people dashing frantically about, with at least one young lady in her underwear.

Noises Off is generally acknowledged to be his comic masterpiece, and one of the funniest plays in contemporary theatre. I saw the original Broadway version in the 80s, from the back of the 1100 seat Brooks Atkinson Theatre (the last rush ticket I ever bought), which at that distance was like watching a circus of comical ants. So I made sure to sit close to the stage at Ferndale Rep.

 In the first act we see a theatre company in a rushed final rehearsal of a farce called Nothing On. The set—part of a country house replete with the many doors required by farce—is turned around for the second act so the backstage is visible, and the relationships and romantic misalliances set up in the first act result in riotous physical comedy. (It was probably this act that Frayn kept rewriting, to include new business invented by various casts.)

 The stage is turned around again for the third act, for a performance at the end of the tour when the actors’ relationships have devolved further, and the chaos has spilled onto the stage.

 The first act is usually the set-up for the next two, but in the Ferndale production it was genuinely funny. The cast performed the physical comedy of the second act flawlessly, producing the most hilarious moments. The third act had lots of payoffs and comic business but seemed less coherent, which is an odd word to use about chaos.

 Besides accomplishing the physical bits at break-neck speed, the actors also had to quickly sketch characters in the first act, aided by Frayn’s skill in providing most with attitudes and catch phrases to capture their characters. 

The entire cast--Adina Lawson, Bryeon Earle, Sam Cord, Brittany Gonzales, Bill and Gerri Cose, Jim Berry and Daniel Amaral—performed both jobs with skill and conviction. Sam Cord deserves special mention for the most acrobatic stunts. All in all, it’s a high quality production, with a solidly handsome set designed by Gary Franklin (during the two unavoidable but draining intermissions, audience members seemed to like watching it be turned around), and 1980s period costumes (complete with leisure suit) by Christen Condry Whisenhunt.

 Director Renee Grinnell, who did Lend Me A Tenor at NCRT last season, again demonstrates her facility for fast-paced farce. Some of the physical humor involves a telephone cord, a lost contact lens and a plate of sardines. It’s fascinating that in the age of cell phones, disposable lenses and microwaved snacks that this comedy still works.

Also the story involves a style of theatre and a theatrical tradition unfamiliar to most of us here, and largely gone. Even the titles (“Noises Off,” “Nothing On”) are British and theatrical puns. But even without the depth of reference, the basic structure and theatricality of  Noises Off can delight audiences in Humboldt County.  Plus the style of Frayn’s language is familiar—he shares a comedic (and philosophical) lineage with Monty Python, Douglas Adams and Beyond the Fringe.

 Besides, theatre stories have their own charm and wide attraction. People who have participated in theatre may have encountered actors like the earnest Frederick, the pompous but vague Garry, etc., or they recognize the stage culture of endearments and entanglements, and this knockabout will have additional resonance, and even sweetness.

Michael Frayn

Booking the Stage

The Human Touch

Here in America, land of geographically and socially separated enclaves of experts where only one "brand" per person is permitted, British writer Michael Frayn would be not only an anomaly but a suspicious character. As a playwright, he wrote "Noises Off," the international hit that critic Frank Rich called "the funniest play written in my lifetime," and "Copenhagen," a drama about quantum physicists, another international hit. Frayn is also an accomplished journalist, novelist, translator, screenwriter and writer of nonfiction, including philosophy, of which "The Human Touch" is the latest example. Moreover, it is not the "how to win friends" or just "how to win" sort of philosophy, but serious analysis of what we know and how we know it, particularly concerning the nature of scientific knowledge, as well as the nature of reality.

For more on Michael Frayn's new book, click here for my review in today's San Francisco Chronicle Book Review.

A Little Illness Music

I've got this cold or flu kind of thing. You can't count on a regular cold pattern anymore, apparently--they seem to have their individual characteristics, and ups and downs. But I've never been a suck-it-up and soldier-on type. I don't get sick very often, but when I do, I do it up big. I stay in bed longer, and the rest is resting. "Feed a cold" is also advice I've made into a lifestyle.

So I don't do much. This time around I spent several hours watching a VHS tape I made from TV programs in the 90s, back when the A&E cable channel actually tried to be an Arts & Entertainment channel, and Bravo! was about performance arts. Now they all play the same CSI reruns and have their own perverse "reality" shows. But there was a time that one or both of them ran imported programs from England, where an interviewer called Melvyn Bragg did interviews and so on with notable actors and other theatre artists.

I watched his interview/lunch with Albert Finney, and two fascinating pieces following Ian McKellen (then a youthful 45) in rep at the National Theatre over a season, and Judi Dench rehearsing and playing in A Little Night Music. The McKellen piece was a good insight into that life (in which he might be playing one part, rehearsing the next play, and learning lines for one after that on the same day) as well as a peek into his working process. One of the plays he was working on was Michael Frayn's translation and edited version of Chekhov's first and unproduced play, which Frayn dubbed Wild Honey. As he rehearsed, McKellen was driving himself crazy trying to understand the character he was playing, even going back to a full translation of Chekhov's script, with many long philosophical speeches. He was afraid he would be a disaster and bring down the production. He noted ruefully into his tape recorder that Frayn had shown up for a run-through and had simply grinned. But when the play opened, McKellen was astonished to hear the audience laughing--they had just revealed to him that the play was a comedy. It was also a hit. (Frayn himself tells this story about McKellen in the introduction to his "Plays: Two" volume.)

The Dench piece went back into her acting history with some wonderful clips from old productions. Olivier's "cry" as Oedipus is well-known theatrical legend, but Dench as Lady MacBeth let out a truly terrifying and prolonged scream that deserves its own fame: it said volumes about the character. Dame Dench played Mother Courage in 2005, which must have been something to see, and hear. In this film piece, director Sir Peter Hall says that Dench was blessed with an extraordinary voice, "and in theatre, voice is very nearly all."

Quoth

Michael Frayn: "To be part of a good audience is exhilarating."

First Principles

Let's Hear It for the Audience

I've just finished writing a review for the San Francisco Chronicle of British playwright Michael Frayn's new book, The Human Touch, which is a book of philosophy. Though he writes nonfiction, fiction and screenplays, Frayn is most famous in the U. S. for his comic farce, Noises Off (which I saw on Broadway, and had a seat so far from the stage that I vowed never to economize again with rush tickets; I see Broadway plays so rarely that it makes no sense to ruin the experience with a bad seat) and his intellectual drama, Copenhagen (which I would love to see on stage; I saw the much truncated film version, and I admire the play I read.) Though this book is about the nature of knowledge and even reality, I see the playwright in it--or such is a premise of my review.

Though the central point of the book is a central preoccupation of many of his plays, it may have been especially inspired by aspects of the quantum physics and the ensuing philosophy in Copenhagen, which is about two giants of atomic and quantum physics, Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, in World War II. The uncertainity of what they each said about the Allied and German atomic bomb programs remains an international mystery and inspired the dramatic action of the play. (The mystery and Frayn's involvement in it became the basis of an elaborate hoax perpetrated on him, which he describes with good humor in his little book with David Burke, The Copenhagen Papers. )

However, the point of mentioning all this here is a passage I came across in the introduction to Frayn's first volume of his collected plays, and wanted to share. It's about the role of the audience in theatre. Here's Frayn:

"I sometimes feel that the skill of audiences is not always sufficiently noted. Some theatregoers arrive late, certainly, some of them comment on the performances aloud and wait for the laugh-lines to cough. But the suprising thing is how few behave like this, and how many understand the conventions and are prepared to abide by them. To find two, or five, or ten good actors to perform a play is difficult; to find two hundred, five hundred, or a thousand good people to watch it, night after night, is a miracle. So many people in one room who will sit quietly and listen for two hours---not calling out slogans, not breaking down under the strain of so much communal self-discipline! To be a member of a good audience is exhilarating."