‘Noises Off’ builds to a dual-stage laugh fest

Harriet Howard Heithaus | March 14, 2025 | The Naples Press | https://www.naplespress.com/

If the lifeblood of good comedy is its choreography, Gulfshore Playhouse has the Ballets Russes in its current production of Noises Off.

Comedy, in many ways a more difficult and sophisticated endeavor than drama, depends on timing and movement as much as its script, and this Michael Frayn farce on theater productions from inside as well as out spares no horses. There are doors slamming, head-pummeling, dropped china — from a second-story landing — a hatchet chase and endlessly abused plates of sardines.

Wisely, Gulfshore has brought in director Peter Amster, who three years ago turned its production of The 39 Steps into an advanced class in LOL. It also returned Michele Ragusa, the social-climbing matriarch of Anything Goes this season, as her diametric opposite in dual roles as theater troupe veteran Dotty Otley, and the chatty housekeeper she plays, Mrs. Clackett.

Nearly every actor has dual roles; Noises Off follows a theater troupe as they prepare for, perform and close their own tour of a farce called Nothing On. We see each as both the actor behind their roles and in those roles, all of them Velcroed into place by a hard-working backstage staff and shepherded by an acid-wit director who is dallying with women in both cast and crew.

Disaster begins to germinate during a dress rehearsal in which Otley can’t keep straight the whereabouts of a plate of sardines and a newspaper prop; nor can leading man Garry Lejeune (Dan Fenaughty) explain any of his good ideas for final adjustments past “Well, you know.” And no one can please director Lloyd Dallas (Edward Staudenmayer), who likes to remind them he’s directing Richard III elsewhere.

The fact that they can’t corral liquor-loving Selsdon Mowbray, the inner play’s cat burglar (lovably played by Tom Aulino), and that the self-deprecating Freddy (Jordan Sobel) has just been dumped by his wife will pale in comparison to Act 2’s opening night. A jealous Brooke Ashton (Tess Frazer) threatens to decamp as her character, Vicki, is getting her entrance cues and quickly costumed crew members rush in to temporarily fill parts while they placate her and save Freddy. He’s being pursued by Garry, Dotty’s paramour, who construes a long evening of her consoling Freddy as something quite different and has the fire hatchet as his revenge tool. Fortunately, he’s slower than Freddy.

By the third act, when the play has finally come around to its closing performance, the little fires have become explosions. The plated sardines end up on Mrs. Clackett’s head; a crucial door loses its knob. Freddy, who goes faint at the sight of blood, tumbles down the stairs; every entrance is at the precisely wrong time. And those are fewer than half the mishaps that turn Nothing On hilariously into Nothing Right.

The set is a critical component of the physical comedy. This play within a play is set in an English country manor with more doors than a Home Depot showroom and a landing staircase combination that allows wonderful physical comedy. The coup de grace comes when Freddy, playing the manor’s owner, leapfrogs them two at a time — an act of amazing agility from Sobel — in a vain attempt to shed solvent-burned trousers that have dropped around his ankles.

The set is on a turntable that revolves from the inner play set to its backstage for the second act, and this production lets Brian Atwood, who plays the group’s scenic director, frolic over its surfaces as though he’s doing the moving. It’s an excellent mood setter for what’s coming up.

The cast of strong actors includes Larissa Klinger (Belinda Blair/Flavia Brent) and Angie Janas (Poppy Norton-Taylor) as the sincere actress and stage manager who seem to be everywhere on the stage trying to hold the crew together. Tess Frazer (Brooke Ashton/Vicki), who is the eye candy of the troupe, shines in a different way as a linebound, self-aware prima donna with a shrill voice and contact lenses that won’t stay in.

If there’s a quibble, it’s with the play, which uses its first act to build the character personalities, a necessary endeavor but not hysterically funny. The laughs come at more of a TV pace. (Frayn has extensive creds there, too, including writing for the grandaddy of all satirical news reports, “That Was the Week That Was.”) As soon as the curtain opens on Act 2, however, the audience members who have stuck with the play will be rewarded in spades. Or rather, in endorphins.

Harriet Howard Heithaus covers arts and culture for The Naples Press.

Front Row Harriet Howard Heithaus

‘NOISES OFF’

When: Various times through March 20 Where: Gulfshore Playhouse, 100 Goodlette- Frank Road S., Naples Tickets: $39$109 at gulfshoreplayhouse. org or 239.261.7529