Photo Credit: Katrina Smith
In Sunset Playhouse’s production of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, an appealing cast of actors play actors in and out of roles in a farce-within-a-farce. Brant Allen summons impressively droll energy in the role of the show’s director, Lloyd Dallas, who is forced to contend with a cast woefully unprepared to open a complicated comedy involving slamming doors and countless plates of… sardines.
The cast glides through Frayn’s anarchic, three-act comedy with a diverse range of approaches to comedy. Casey Van Dam is aggressively vague as the male lead, Garry Lejeune, who finds his composure gradually disintegrating over the course of the three acts. Carrie Gray graces the stage with rich, emotional warmth and poise that endeavor to keep everything together—even as it all threatens to come crashing to the ground. Gray’s heroically irrepressible energy is contrasted by the beautifully vacant, juggernaut-like comic energy of Megan Tappan as Brooke, an actress who seems totally incapable of performing anything that isn’t directly in the script. Marcee Doherty-Elst is delightfully inept as Dotty Otley, an actress who has tremendous difficulty with props.
Frayn’s script is remarkably complex. There are many, many ways in which deliberately bad comedy can go legitimately wrong. Director Dustin Martin keeps the energy moving well through three lengthy acts. Nuances in energy and tempo occasionally falter when they should flow, but the cast cartwheels through it all with respectably deft comic agility.
Through March 15 at Furlan Auditorium, 700 Wall St., Elm Grove.
