In many ways Michael Frayn’s 1982 ‘Noises Off’, with its infectious dynamism, hilarious script and unique premise is a paragon of farcical theatre. So much so that when it was announced that the Sydney Theatre Company would be performing their own rendition of the classic there was widespread apprehension that the plays reputation would exceed the production, as reputations so often do. Fortunately these fears weren’t realised. Under the direction of Jonathan Biggins the Sydney Theatre Company was able to produce a truly hilarious and unique production.
‘Noises off’ tells the story of a company of underprepared actors attempting a final midnight dress rehearsal (which half of the cast think is only a technical rehearsal) of “Nothing on”, a raunchy sex fuelled farce, and their subsequent poorly prepared shows. The comic potential of a farce within a farce is massive; as Murphy’s Law, scripted or otherwise, takes hold of the piece and, with a snowballing number of errors, propels the piece to a breakneck pace before imploding spectacularly in the climactic scene.
Mark Thompson’s set is a mechanical marvel with scrupulous attention to detail. The front of the set displays the stage for “Nothing On”, a delightful country house converted from 16th century posset mill, replete with paintings, doyleys and Persian carpets. Combined with the gentle almost glowing yellow lighting (Nigel Levings), reminiscent of candles and oil lanterns, the opening scenes look comically anachronistic, a caricature of a traditional 20th century British living room. The set is then taken a step further when it is spun 180 degrees for act two, showing the backstage of “Nothing on”, completely bare of frivolities it is the antithesis of the original set, de...
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...ad Brooke Ashton spends her time flitting around the stage in her frillies with a clueless and endearing innocence, and Ricardo found the nuance and timing for the airhead role perfectly.
However in an undeniably tough contest it is self-important lead man Garry Lejeune, played by Josh McConville, who steals the show. With his wholehearted (and dangerous) commitment to the physical comedy and myriad of cues and missed cues to remember it is a highly impressive lead performance.
“Noises Off” certainly does make for an enjoyable evening of entertainment. Biggins makes the smart decision to cut from three acts down to two so that the ending arrives just as your aching from laughter. It doesn’t try and be anything its not, only mindless relaxed entertainment, and with all the drama in modern daily life that’s exactly what I wanted. Sit back, relax and enjoy!
If there is truly tradition to be found among the great theatres both on and off Broadway, then certainly the Sullivan Street Playhouse and its long running production of The Fantasticks rates as one of the most celebrated of New York theatrical traditions. Maintaining its place as the longest running production Off Broadway, The Fantasticks remains an enchanting and insightful tale of both young love and bitter disillusionment. It also reminds one, in this age of spectacle and the mega-musical, how powerful and truly inspiring theatre itself can be. Clearly, one of the great strengths of this production and a large part of its appeal for audiences over the last four decades lies in the fact that both the story and the style of presentation compliment each other so completely. Here we find the non-essentials are stripped away, and we are left to rely simply on the imagination of both the audience and the performers to create a magical evening.
stages a cheeky, contemporary, and impishly funny timeless battle between young and old, past and present, and an emotionally riveting search for the truth of it all. Posner fully absorbs the dark comedy from its original in which was a famous failure at its premiere at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in Petersburg, but luckily, Stupid Fucking Bird premiered with much higher reviews. His adaptation allows the essence of Chekhov’s original script to shine through, while renovating all the quirks, futility, and circularity of human behavior that Chekhov’s script explores but that often get lost with modern audiences because of the language often thought of as “dated”. Just as Chekhov’s naturalistic play was a new form in the Russian theater scene, and was only a success two years after its premiere at the Moscow Art Theatre, Stupid Fucking Bird allows Posner and Burris to take up Conrad/Konstantin’s challenge to create new forms of theatre and invite the audience to reflect on how art, love, an...
The performance ‘Chasing the Lollyman’ by Debase productions succeeded in using the Dramatic Languages to create a Dramatic Meaning that comments on a social and political issue. This, along with the effective manipulation of the dramatic conventions, has allowed Debase to successfully recognised the Epic Theatre style. Chasing the Lollyman is one man show starring one of Queensland's most dynamic and funny Indigenous performers, Mark Sheppard. He shares many stories, a celebration of urban Indigenous identity and takes a satirical look at the media and popular culture. Playing a variety of characters, Mark pokes fun at everything from Neighbours (what would it be like if a Murri family moved into Ramsey street) to polities. The dramatic meaning of the performance is if Australia wants to become one, we need to learn to accept each other for their differences.
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a comedy that has been interpreted in different ways, enabling one to receive multiple experiences of the same story. Due to the content and themes of the play, it can be creatively challenging to producers and their casting strategies. Instead of being a hindrance, I find the ability for one to experiment exciting as people try to discover strategies that best represent entertainment for the audience, as well as the best ways to interpret Shakespeare’s work.
Ever heard of a story that sings of the “Angel of Music” and the “Phantom of the Opera”? A tale that once you have listened to the sweet melody that you will realized that you've pasted the “Point of No Return”? This love triangle has captivated multitudes ever since the 1910 original Phantom of the Opera was published in France by Monsieur Leroux, although most story lovers recall the musical of the same name by Andrew Lloyd Webber or the motion picture adaption. Although this story has been entertaining people for over a century, in this new era have prerecorded voices and movements begun to overshadow the talented performers of live theater? Although “The lavish screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera (2005) only deepened the damage” of the dislike of musicals made into film “with non-stars in the leads and an unimaginative production,”(Musical),which version, the live performance or the film, makes the story more attractive? To answer these questions, permit this essay to analyze two methods of storytelling: 2011 live performance Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall and the 2005 film, and decide if music and story lovers everywhere have too “turned from true beauty”.
Conflict with reality and appearance brings to surface the elements of the traditional commedia dell’arte in the form of mistaken identity, which enriches the farcical plot-lines that occur in the play. The very embodiment of mistaken identity establishes that what may be seem real could be quite the opposite, however the characters in the play are unable to distinguish this as their vision becomes distorted by their fall into the deception of appearance. It is this very comedic device that enables the conflict between Roscoe (Rachel) and Alan, or Charlie and Alan’s father to occur which is a significant part of the comedic nature of the play as the unproportional situation is what sparks laughter from the audience, and so it is the presence of mistaken identity alone that conveys the play into a light-hearted comedy. Furthermore, Peter O'Neill quotes that ‘using humour can provide a degree of safety for expressing difficult ideas or opinions which could be particularly effective…’. In the circumstances of the quotation Richard Bean effectively c...
Alan Bennett presents his characters in Talking Heads by writing the plays in the form of monologue. By employing this technique he has managed to create a rich and detailed World in which his stories unfold but, he only allows us to see it through the eyes of a single narrator. When reading a play that is presented in this manner it is possible to lose sight of the fact that you are only getting one person’s version of events and you may start to believe that you are having conversations reported to you verbatim. This is a clever mechanism because the narrators can often be unreliable and lead the reader to form opinions and draw conclusions that quite often turn out to be unfounded and false. The term “Talking heads is a synonym in television for boredom” (Bennett, 2007, p, 10) yet, these talking heads are certainly not boring, the settings may be drab and ordinary, the characters are not exciting or inspiring yet, the gossipy way in which the stories are told hooks the reader in. Fitting neatly into the genre of tragicomedy it is perhaps fitting that the ‘tragic’ comes before the ‘comedy’, certainly the dramatist infuses the plays with a rich dose of humour but the melancholy subject matter and the often quite sad and lonely characters always counter balances the laughs with a tinge of sadness.
The setup of the stage was very simple. It was the living room of a home in the early 1980’s. It looked like a normal household, and it had small things such as crumpled up pieces of paper lying around the wastebasket. It also had a couch, circular class table and a recliner in the living room. The dining room was to the left side of the stage and only had the dining table and surrounding chairs. There was a door in the back of the set where characters entered and exited through. Beside the door was a table and stool where Willum presumably worked on his blueprints for the hotel. The lighting design was great; it put you into the atmosphere of the
As in all genres, the musicals have had its share of failures. Some worthy dramas have been pressed into service and musicalized and sometimes butchered in the process, and audiences have had to watch a fine play diluted into a mediocre musical. But the successes have been many and spectacular and they have left a long lasting effect on the American art and culture.
The lighting was also very effectively used to show the coming and going of cars on the set. The reflection of lights on the front door of the house were used resemble those of an automobile. Even the final scene had just enough absence of light that the shadows of the characters could be seen sitting around the dinner table and praying by candlelight. At the very end of the performance the candles were extinguished consuming the set in blackness in turn signifying the end of the production.
The difference between appearances and reality is also explored through the play-within-a-play, to particularly comic effect. The "rude mechanicals" completely fail to understand the magic of the theatre,
Rhodes, John David. Meshes of the Afternoon. London: Palgrave Macmillan on Behalf of the British Film Institute, 2011. Print.
The clown contributes towards the humourous entertainment of this play through his numerous puns and jokes. He is a source of laughter, not because we are humoured by his "foolery"; for he proves to be no fool at all; but rather because he amuses us with his brilliant wit. Having mastered the art of jesting, Feste is sensitive of his profession, always aware of the circumstances he is in and the appropriateness of this folly.
On stage, these points were, looking at the opinions of a majority of both the audiences and the critics, presented successfully by Brook and the cast he worked with. From the prison guards who loomed in the background, clothed in butcher aprons and armed with clubs, to the half-naked Marat, slouched in a tub and covered in wet rags, forever scratching and writing, to the small group of singers, dressed and painted up as clowns, to the narcoleptic but murderous Charlotte Corday, Weiss and Brook offered a stage production that both engaged and amazed the audience, while at the same time forced them to question their role as the audience; no better exemplified than at the very end of the play, where the inmates, standing menacingly at the edge of the stage, actually begin to applaud the very people who applaud their performance, aggravating and confusing some, but forcing most t...
The term ‘comedy of menace’ is applied to a group of plays in which comedy is intertwined with elements of tragedy. The term was first used by David Campton as a subtitle of one of his plays, The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace. Though both comedy and tragedy are based on incongruities and contradictions, the driving force in comedy is humour and the driving force in tragedy is horror and menace. In comedy the humour is generated through dramatic techniques such as divergences, repetitiveness, surprise, illogical events and statements that often lead to outcomes which are quite contrary to what the audience expect and thereby cause laughter and amusement. In comedy of menace, two contradictory