Noisy laughter

I last ‘saw’ Noises Off in 2012 and it was fun on that occasion, although not all for the right reasons.  This time, with a family outing to the revival at the Phoenix Theatre, I had a lovely reminder of the joy of laughing with a room full of other people. And I could see the whole stage this time! 

This farce about a farce squeezes every ounce it can out of the genre, performing the door slamming, trips, falls and trouser dropping with meticulous precision.  To keep the meta-ness going, the programme also contained a beautifully po-faced parody literary essay about ‘Nothing On’, the play within the play which made me wince a bit as I am a sucker for those essays in the more arty end of theatre programmes.   I enjoyed Felicity Kendall’s performance as Dotty  and Joseph Millson as Garry, and the whole cast operated together as a well oiled and choreographed machine which was a joy to watch.  I had a lot of fun and we all laughed a lot.  So much that at one point my face actually ached.  

The play is apparently 40 years old now and that does show, particularly in the sexual politics which are a bit dodgy.  I have read a couple of reviews which highlight the issues and yes, I agree, if someone was writing this today I would expect to see a different take, but actually as a piece of its time skewering the clichés of the genre whilst delivering a masterclass in how to do it, it stood up pretty well. 

This week there has been a debate about the cleansing of Roald Dahl’s problematic language, and this is another example of the same challenge.  Do you leave a work to stand or fall as it is?  Or do you adjust it to make it more palatable for different times?  Or do you properly contextualise it as a museum piece? I change my mind on this at regular intervals, so I don’t have a definitive answer and the debate continues on.  But I’m glad this revival is out there doing its stuff. 

So, I had a lot of fun this evening anyway.  And on the way home I spotted the Ukrainian colours a number of times and it made me think that sometimes we don’t have to ignore the issues, there's a lot wrong with the world, but we should also be grateful and take the laughter when we can. And there’s a lot on offer here.