Noises Off Blog

What were your impressions of Noises Off? Noises off is a fantastically hilarious show. I had no idea what the show was about until I got to the cue-to-cue a week before the show. As I worked soundboard operator, I got to see the show every night as well as the rehearsal run-throughs that took place the week before. In almost every show I’ve worked, by the end of the run, it has lost some of its quality; however, with Noises Off I has laughing every night. Every time the show started I knew the actors were going to pull something out and added a whole new level to the show. In some cases, the hilarity was caused by a mistake in the show that the actors had to cover for. But generally the actors didn’t need such aids to keep the show fresh. --Although the show was overall hilariously fantastic, there were some moments that I was not so fond of in each run. The first area is most of the first act. It is the longest and by far the slowest. Nothing’s On is definitely not a show I would enjoy more than once, if the first act is anything to go by. I had a total of 4 cues the entire act and so it dragged by each night with only sparse moments of laughable comedy. The other area that I was not as fond of was the last 5 minutes or so. Everything in the third act it fantastic until the Lloyd gets stage fright and starts randomly bringing objects to the front of the stage. It’s not that I didn’t like it, I just found it painfully awkward and it didn’t seem to measure up the hilarity that had already ensued. --Hands down my favorite section of the show is from the beginning of the “show” in act 2 all the way to the point where the Lloyd gets stage fright. The beginning of the third act is particularly funny to me because I have literally had nightmares about a show going that wrong. Nothing is where it is suppose to be and despite their best efforts, the actors cant keep the show going. I feel like the phone ringing 3 times is particularly funny to the stage crew because it is exactly what a befuddled SM and board op would do in such a situation. --Although I was not particularly partial to act one, each act still had lines and moments that were always funny. That moment in the third act is the second time Freddie is on stage (trying to give the “proceedings in court” speech); Garry and Brooke are on the second floor in a different part of the play and Freddie’s only words are “sorry.” This moment always got laughs from both the audience and me alike. Act two’s moment where Brooke comes back on stage from missing her line “why did I lock the door, why did you lock the door?” Watching Nick scramble back along the flat and out of the bedroom door was dependably fantastic. In spite of its overall dryness, act 1 contained my favorite line of the entire show. It is one of the few moments that were always funny in that act and was Lloyd’s line “and God said ‘where the fuck was Tim’ [Tim enters] and there the fuck was Tim.”