Noises Off

Michael Frayn

Stephen Joseph Theatre production

Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough

August 9-September 6, 2025; 2hrs 50 mins (two intervals)

They make a lovely group: l-r Adam Astill (back to camera), Christopher Godwin, Alex Phelps, Olivia Woolhouse, Andy Cryer, Valeria Antwi, Susan Twist and Charlie Ryan. All pics: Tony Bartholomew

Sardines. Rarely, if at all, have these fish played such a starring role in a play.

A plate of these fishy delights is centre-stage from the get-go in Michael Frayn’s classic farce Noises Off, a piece of theatre regularly categorised as the funniest-ever stage comedy. People slip on sardines, forget where they’ve left the sardines, juggle with several plates of sardines at once, sit on sardines, drop sardines... but never eat them.

The sardines play a key role in play-within-a-play Nothing On, the sort of theatrical farce that used to be the staple of the theatre rep system, but which has grown out of favour in recent years. Essential ingredients include dropped trousers, a young girl in her undies, mistaken identity, marital infidelity (real and imagined), mistaken identity, pratfalls and comic violence. Noises Off has all of these ingredients, with added sardine.

In Noises Off we witness the touring production of Nothing On at three stages of its life – the dress rehearsal, a matinee performance (viewed from backstage) during the run and the final, chaotic performance at the end of the tour.

Frayn was driven to write the comedy after watching a production of one of his early plays from the wings and finding it funnier than watching from the auditorium. There’s always something irresistible about watching behind-the-scenes stories, real or imagined, as things go from bad to worse - and in Nothing On, everything that can go wrong does go wrong, both onstage and backstage.

The Scarborough production is the first to be staged in the round, with the audience surrounding the cast, something many thought impossible because the three acts flip from front-stage to back-stage and back again. But director Paul Robinson and designer Kevin Jenkins pull it off with the aid of a cast on top form. A few words get lost here and there in the mayhem, but the physical comedy – including a tumble down the stairs that earns Alex Phelps a well-deserved round of applause – is played to perfection.

The rest of the cast also deserve medals for their dedication to giving this farce everything it needs. Names deserve to be named, so let's hear it for Susan Twist, Adam Astill, Olivia Woolhouse, Annie Kirkman, Andy Cryer, Valerie Antwi, Charlie Ryan and Christopher Godwin.

Praise too for the mock Nothing On programme (mostly written before the first-ever run by Frayn) inside the Noises Off programme. In the Behind the Dressing Room Doors section we learn that veteran actress Dolly Otley is returning to the stage to create the role of Mrs Clackett after playing Mrs Hackett, Britain’s most famous lollipop lady in 320 episodes of TV’s On the Zebras, and that while still at drama school, fellow actor Garry Lejeune won the coveted Laetitia Daintyman Medal for Violence.

Disappointingly, there is no backstage gossip about the sardines.

More info and tickets here