“Noises Off” is hard to beat … and the OLRC proves it

Since being written in the early 1980s by playwright Michael Frayn, “Noises Off” has become a staple of community and semi-professional theatre. If done correctly, the setting, the dialogue, the oddball characters and the slapstick choreography will leave an audience with sore sides, wiping tears of laughter from their eyes.

The Old Lyric Repertory Company does it right.

For the third time in 20-plus years, the OLRC tackles the hilarious play-within-a-play and generally succeeds, judging from the tickled ribs and wet cheeks on opening night.

“Noises Off” follows a troupe of less-than-perfect actors as they prepare to take a production (known to them as “Nothing On”) on the road to municipal theaters throughout England. Act 1 is a peek at the final rehearsal for the play, just hours before their opening. Act 2 turns the set of “Nothing On” around, and gives “Noises Off” audience members a look at the backstage shenanigans of the troupe about a month later, who by now are getting on each other’s nerves but can almost produce the show by rote.

Act 3 presents the final show produced by the group, after audience members — in the Old Lyric, not in the traveling show, mind you — have come to know the actors, their quirks, their loves and foibles as they gamely try to just finish the show. By now, the play-within-a-play has become a farce-within-a-farce, with some characters playing actors other than their own and lots of costume changes and plenty of fall-down-funny silliness done at a breakneck pace. Oh, and with some lost contact lenses. And plenty of sardines.

For a few moments, the OLRC production felt like community theater, a bit less-professional than patrons have come to expect. The production started 13 minutes late, the off-stage noises that were meant to be part of the show were too soft, the creaky stairs were a bit too creaky and put off a lot of distracting noise, and there was an untimely curtain opening during intermission. It was a bit odd that some in the production tried a British accent, and some didn’t.

Act 1 was slightly slow and stiff initially. William Warren (playing director Lloyd Dallas) sounded a bit too rehearsed and not exasperated enough in the first few moments. Dotty Otley (played by Tracie Norton) tried a Cockney accent that trailed off a bit at the end of sentences and some of her early lines sounded a bit mumbled. But once the stage became full of more members of the oddball troupe, everyone’s timing and characterization picked up and the cast –both of them — started finding their stride.

Amanda Beatty (playing stage manager Poppy Norton-Taylor) saves the first scenes with her wide-eyed panicked presentation. Opening scenes found Ron King (playing Selsdom Mowbray, a bottle-tipping, near-deaf actor) not projecting well enough, but he, too, found his voice before the end of the opening.

Frederick Fellowes is played by Kent Hadfield, perfect as a nondescript struggling actor, a man so bland he gets nosebleeds when people raise their voices. Tim Smith plays the stage manager for the troupe, and after a so-what Act 1, becomes an audience favorite by the end of the production.

But the bulk of the OLRC production fell to Richie Call to make sure it succeeded. As Garry Lejeune, Call brought waves of laughter with a lift of his eyebrow or a drop of his head. His frustration with the failing moments of “Nothing On” gives “Noises Off” just the right amount of perfectly timed comedy. His delivery of Lejeune’s unique dialogue and intense mannerisms help make sense of a critical Act 2 and provides glue to an Act 3 that resembles a human whack-a-mole game.

“Noises Off” gets the Old Lyric season off to a good start, and it will be running in repertory with “Route 66,” “Postmortem” and “Relative Values” until Aug. 17.