Brighton - classic farce marks 40 years

Joining Felicity Kendal (The Good Life, Relatively Speaking and Hay Fever) as Dotty Otley will be stage and screen actors Tracy-Ann Oberman (EastEnders, Friday Night Dinner and Edmond) as Belinda Blair and Matthew Kelly (The Dresser, Waiting For Godot as well as hosting Stars In Their Eyes and You Bet!) as Selsdon Mowbray.

The full cast will include Alexander Hanson as Lloyd Dallas, Joseph Millson as Garry Lejeune, Sasha Frost as Brooke Ashton, Pepter Lunkuse as Poppy Norton Taylor, Jonathan Coy as Fredrick Fellows, and Hubert Burton as Tim Allgood.

Noises Off will be directed by Lindsay Posner (God of Carnage, Hay Fever, Stones in his Pockets).

Michael Frayn’s celebrated play serves up a riotous double bill – a play within a play. Hurtling along at breakneck speed, Noises Off follows the on and off-stage antics of a touring theatre company as they stumble their way through the fictional farce, Nothing On. From the shambolic final rehearsals before opening night in Weston-Super-Mare, to a disastrous matinee in Ashton-Under-Lyme seen entirely, and hilariously silently, from backstage, before we share their final, catastrophic performance in Stockton-on-Tees.

After watching from the wings a production of his 1970 farce The Two of Us with Richard Briers and Lynn Redgrave and noting that the goings on behind the scenes were funnier than out front, Michael Frayn wrote Noises Off.

The original production opened in London in 1982 before becoming a worldwide hit. A feature film was made of Noises Off in 1992.

Noises Off is written by Michael Frayn. The creative team for this 40th anniversary production includes Lindsay Posner (director), Simon Higlett (designer), Paul Pyant (lighting designer), Greg Clarke (sound designer), Will Stuart (composer), Ruth Cooper-Brown (movement and fight director) and George Jibson (associate director)