WHAT gives a play-staying power? The question came to mind when watching the 40th-anniversary production of Michael Frayn's Noises Off at London's Phoenix Theatre. I was seeing the play for the fifth or sixth time and yet I found myself laughing uproariously, as was the rest of the audience, at this gradual falling apart of a fictional British farce titled Nothing On. The kind of door-banging, trouser-dropping farce that Mr Frayn skilfully punctures may have gone out of fashion years ago, but we still delight in its disintegration. Why, exactly?
Most people know by now that in Noises Off we see a nightmare dress rehearsal of Nothing On, followed by a backstage perspective on a live performance and, finally, the show on the last leg of its provincial tour, but, as a wise critic once wrote, 'to narrate the plot of a farce is at best to decant Champagne'. The real reason Noises Off survives is because it is about something that even those of us who don't work in theatre can recognise: the fear that the order we seek to impose on existence will descend into chaos. I am not for a moment suggesting we come out of the theatre talking about the ideas, but there is a philosophical core to Noises Off that you don't find, for instance, in the hugely popular The Play That Goes Wrong, which simply glories in theatre's potential for disaster.
Denne historien er fra February 15, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra February 15, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
