I MUST have seen Michael Frayn’s enduringly hilarious play Noises Off more than a dozen times during my reviewing life, with TV stars, leading West End actors, the Number 3 touring professional companies that it sends up, and by amateurs. I have never seen a production so wonderfully inventive and brilliantly performed as that by Salisbury’s Studio Theatre at its Ashley Road venue this week, and until Saturday 12th July.

It’s a massive challenge for an amateur company, requiring two very substantial sets as well as the essential doors, dozens of props and, of course, sardines. Director Lesley Bates had always wanted to tackle the play. At first Studio’s designer in chief Alistair Faulkner said it was an impossibility … then he had “a few ideas” … and the outcome is an astonishing revolving set robust enough to deal with endless dashes up and down stairs, both on and backstage, opening and closing doors, broken windows, disappearing props and all the general vicissitudes of producing a farce.

Nothing On is the play within a play and it starts at Weston-super-Mare in January, travels to Goole in February and ends at Stockton on Tees in April. We see it in Acts 1 and 3 from the audience perspective, and in Act 2 from backstage – it is a brilliant conceit which never loses its impact, and the Salisbury audience could choose to watch the hard-working backstage team as they turned the set round, all ready for the next onslaught.

As well as adding some fresh comedy moments to a play I thought held no surprises, Lesley Bates has assembled a dream cast, and one that avoids the usual professional allurement of casting one or two “main stars”. Every single one of the nine actors establishes a complete, recognisable and wonderfully compelling character. ASM Poppy (played by Emily Casselton) squeezes every possible comedy moment from her supporting role, and Studio stalwart Stew Taylor brings both exhaustion and a sprinter’s energy to the overworked stage manager.

Jamie Pullen has never been better than as the jealous, tongue tied and lusty Garry/Roger, and Sarah Derry takes on the usually dumb-blonde make-weight Brooke and injects her with supreme comic timing and real angst. George Goulding has the role of Lloyd Dallas, the opinionated, sarcastic and over-sexed director Lloyd Dallas, sometimes giving his notes from the heart of the Studio Theatre audience.

Joining the company from the Somerset /Dorset stages, Robert Brydges is the perfect Frederick/ Philip, with matinee idol looks, faltering self-esteem and a nose very given to bleeding in any crisis. He’s ideally matched by Rachel Fletcher’s Belinda/Flavia – often an under-written role but here given hilarious charm and purpose.

If the central role is that of Dotty Otley/Mrs Clackett, an archetypal confused housekeeper in the Mrs Overall mould, Joanna Daniel played it to marvellous effect, tied in knots, kittenishly flirtatious, angrily jealous (who will forget the weight of that fire axe?). And then there is Selsdon, the drunken old stager playing the burglar, and changing his voice for every word and motion. Paul Chalmers really is a joy.

The run has been sold out for weeks, but if you can possibly find a return ticket, don’t miss the chance. You won’t see a better Noises Off, anywhere.

GP-W

Photographs by Anthony von Roretz, Trinity Photography