Two fall-out-of-your-seat-laughing British comedies kick off summer in the Valley. New Century Theatre opens its 20th anniversary season with a revival of one of its all-time hits, Noises Off. And the Royal National Theatre’s production of the 19th-century sex comedy of manners London Assurance comes to the Amherst Cinema.
Noises Off, a fall-about comedy by the versatile Michael Frayn, is a send-up of the nudge-nudge wink-wink British sex farce. You know, the kind with jealous wives, mistaken identities, pneumatic cuties running around in their underwear, middle-aged gents running around in their underwear, and lots of doors for running in and out of. It also draws a wickedly funny bead on backstage life in the theater.
The show, a play inside a play, tracks a second-rate troupe on tour in a third-rate farce, overlaying the hapless onstage performances with proliferating backstage trouble and strife. The onstage play has a silly plot set in a country house with two couples who aren’t supposed to be there, plus a grumpy housekeeper and a semi-retired burglar. While the opening performances of Sam Rush’s production hadn’t yet gained the full momentum of giddy hilarity, the overlapping sight gags provided literally a laugh a minute.
The cast is almost a who’s who of veteran New Century performers: Phil Kilbourne as the harried director; Sara Whitcomb as the snarky, scatty old pro; Buzz Roddy as the nosebleed-prone narcissist; Cate Damon as the saccharine mother hen; Patrick Tango as the over-literal actor who worries about the script’s gaps in logic; James Emery as the techie and all-purpose understudy; and Steve Brady as the broken-down boozer. Only Molly Haas-Hooven, as the stage manager, is a relative newcomer, and her frenetic, akimbo performance more than holds its own with the old hands.
And what about the obligatory ditzy dame in the underwear? Well, last weekend’s performances had their share of real-life backstage drama, when Lisa Abend sprained her ankle and couldn’t go on. (The multiple stairways on Dan Rist’s nifty rotating onstage/backstage set put that out of the question.) On a day’s notice, another New Century regular, Sandra Blaney, donned the black bustiere and, script in hand, turned in a pitch-perfect performance.
Noises Off: June 24-26, New Century Theatre, Mendenhall Center, Smith College, Northampton, (413) 585-3220, www.newcenturytheatre.org.
London Assurance, a hit in 1841 and again now, has a silly plot set in a country house with two couples who aren’t supposed to be together, plus a saucy maid and a snooty valet. The National Theatre’s production has been getting delirious reviews and sold-out houses, and is now a bonus attraction in the inaugural NT Live series of high-def satellite broadcasts of live performances.
The production features Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw, two stars of the British stage who are equally at home in low comedy and high tragedy (he’s been Hamlet, she’s been Medea). He plays randy, foppish old Sir Harcourt Courtly, she an equestrian virago named (wait for it) Lady Gay Spanker, who bewitches him. The plot’s amorous convolutions also involve a younger pair: pretty, hard-headed Grace, who was supposed to marry Sir Harcourt, and dissolute son Charles, who falls for his dad’s fiancee. Jealous husbands, mistaken identities, and more such things, of course ensue.”
London Assurance: June 28 and July 15, Amherst Cinema Arts Center, 28 Amity St., Amherst, (413) 253-2547, amherstcinema.org.
