Review: Noises Off in Chichester - the art of farce delivered with supreme skill

Noises Off, at Chichester Festival Theatre this week and at the Congress Theatre, Eastbourne from January 23-27, is precisely and deliciously in the “exactly what we need right now” category. On the coldest of nights, it blasted us with the wonderful warmth of laughter.

But maybe it was above all the perfect reminder that farce is probably the highest of the theatrical arts. Think of the absolute wheels-falling-off total loss of control we witnessed tonight. Behind it was the most rigorous and tightest control – plus supreme skill in superabundance.

Michael Frayn’s play-within-in-a-play, a hopelessly doomed farce called Nothing On, is something we see three times, once on stage in rehearsals, once behind the scenes in performance and finally on stage again in total disarray with the show now on the road. Across the three acts we get progressive theatrical meltdown. The timing of the cast who play not just their characters but also the characters their characters play is mind-boggling, played at breakneck speed, beautifully and hilariously capturing the most wretched (and wretchedly funny) of theatrical disintegrations.

Maybe there are moments when it seems just a little laboured in the opening Act, but stick with it. Everything is reinvested in the total freefall we are heading towards. And goodness, we get it all, from forgotten lines to actors pointlessly questioning rather than just obeying, from painfully inserted cacti to the demons of drink. The slamming/sticking doors and the gravitationally-challenged trousers are just the start of it. On-stage liaisons are as nothing to the off-stage ones as all manner of resentments, passions and heart-breaks erupt.

Liza Goddard, Matthew Kelly and Simon Shepherd lead the cast, but everyone plays more than their part in a blissfully funny night at the theatre. You might feel it takes a while to crank itself up; but goodness, it’s worth it in the end. And how lovely to see Chichester’s Dame Patricia Routledge, who starred in the London premiere in 1982, amongst us in the CFT audience.