At four in the afternoon on Thursday the fifteenth of October, I saw Noises Off at The Bishop’s School. The show was directed by Courtney Flanagan. Noises Off is an English play by the playwright Michael Frayn. The actors in the production were in grades ten through twelve and all were quite talented for their age. I thoroughly enjoyed the performance.
The set worked extremely well with the production. It was set up like a two story home, and took up the entire stage. There was a staircase on stage right, a couch and small table downstage center, windows along the back wall of the “bottom story,” and seven doors overall, and one curtain actors could pass through. For the second act, the set was turned around so the show was set backstage. The portion of the show that took place “backstage” looked extremely realistic because it was actually behind the original set. This definitely made the show feel more real. Although it took place in a proscenium theatre, the show felt quite intimate because it didn’t entirely take place onstage. During parts that included the director, Lloyd, instructing the actors, Lloyd walked around/by the
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Even though the actors were all high schoolers, they did a great job embodying their characters. Matthew Kerr did especially well showing the cutesy awkwardness of his role as Freddy, and Isabel Dumke really embraced the drama and sensitivity of Poppy. Their facial expressions were never dull, the acting was comedic, they didn’t forget to speak in their accents, and I didn’t catch even one forgotten line. This might have been because forgetting a line can be worked into the show very easily, so if it happens it goes unnoticed. Although the accents were consistent, they could have been improved, along with enunciation. Everyone projected well, but spoke somewhat fast, which made some lines a little bit hard to understand. Despite these flaws, it was still a good