Michael Frayn
Ever since I first saw the play “Noises Off” on Broadway around 1984 I’ve been deeply impressed by Michael Frayn, its author.
I’d read about the play before I attended it. It was said to be very funny and very clever. But it was exponentially funnier and more clever than I’d imagined, probably the funniest and most clever play I’d ever seen, then or later. It was also crazily complex in terms of its “business” and its staging, requiring split-second perfection in its timing, as well as prodigious memories in its actors.
I recently got a look at the script for “Noises Off,” something I’d always wondered about. How does a playwright even write the directions for that sort of thing? The script is just as complicated as I’d thought, a sort of fugue of action and words that’s hard to puzzle out when reading but works perfectly onstage, like a very intricate orchestral score.
And so I’ve long wondered about Frayn, who has also written other plays I’ve seen, of a very different type. What kind of a protean mind does he have?
He talks about his motives here:
MF: I never write with any audience in mind. I never think that anyone’s going to do the plays. People often ask if you think about an audience or if you think about which actors are going to perform them. Well, you can’t, or my brain is simply not big enough to do this. Every channel is, has to be dedicated to thinking about what you are writing. You really don’t have any, or I don’t have any spare space to spare to think about are people going to like this or whatever, or is this suitable for this kind of theatre or that kind of theatre. And certainly with Noises Off and with Copenhagen and with Democracy I didn’t think that anyone would perform them at all, I thought I was just writing them for my own amusement.
Astounding. He sounds sincere, too. Come to think of it, one of the joys of “Noises Off” may be just that: that it was a form of play in the nontheatrical meaning of the word, an activity “engaged in for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.”
“Noises Off” is not only the funniest play I’ve ever seen, bar none, but unlike many comedies its humor bears repeating. I believe I’ve seen it four or five times, the first three times within a couple of years of each other, and I continued to find it very funny each time. A lot of the humor is of the slapstick farcical variety, which is not ordinarily my cup of tea. But somehow it’s pulled off at such a brisk pace that it works phenomenally well.
I’ve seen Frayn’s play “Copenhagan” (also referenced in that quote of his) too, many years later. It’s thoughtful and intellectual and hardly a barrel of laughs. After I saw it, I had to go back and check to make sure the same person had written them both.
More from the interview:
UC: Could you give an example of one of your plays where you remember exactly how you got together the general idea and the specific topic?
MF: Well, I can remember with Noises Off, that – I told you that my first show was four short plays The Two of Us, and one of them was a farce and the point of the evening was, it was played by just two actors, one actor and an actress. And the farce had five characters in it, who were discovering each
other in embarrassing positions or whatever. So the two actors had to do a lot of fast, quick changing and running through one door and to another backstage putting on a different coat or so and one night I watched it from backstage and I thought this is funnier than what’s going on at the front and I must one day write a farce seen from behind.It was a very easy thought to have and it took me a very, very long time to do.
I bet it did.
If you haven’t seen the play, I’ll mention that it has one of those play-within-a-play structures. But none of the action takes place outside the theater at all. The first act is a rehearsal of a supposed play that’s a second-rate farce. The second act is a performance of the same play as seen from backstage. The third act is a performance seen from the front but occurring much later in a grinding tour in which all the relationships between the actors (not so great to begin with) have disintegrated in various ways.
That explanation of “Noises Off” and its genesis is immediately followed by this one from Frayn, about his play “Copenhagen”:
Copenhagen is again, problems I’ve been thinking about for a long time, about quantum mechanics and indeterminacy. And then I happened to read a book by Thomas Powers called Heisenberg’s War which told the story of Heisenberg’s trip to Copenhagen in 1941, much written about then, but I had
never come across it, and since I’d read it, I thought: this suggests, this seems to encapsulate something about the difficulty of knowing why people do what they do and there is a parallel between that and the impossibility that Heisenberg established in physics, about ever knowing everything about
the behaviour of physical objects. So that idea sort of came quite quickly and it took a very, very long time then to work out how to do it. An appallingly long time.
That’s quite a wide-ranging mind Frayn has.
By the way, Frayn has also had a great deal of success as a translator of Russian:
He is now considered to be Britain’s finest translator of Anton Chekhov (The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard) as well as an early untitled work, which he titled Wild Honey (other translations of the work have called it Platonov or Don Juan in the Russian Manner) and a number of Chekhov’s smaller plays for an evening called The Sneeze (originally performed on the West End by Rowan Atkinson).
He also translated Yuri Trifonov’s play Exchange, Leo Tolstoy’s The Fruits of Enlightenment, and Jean Anouilh’s Number One.
One more thing about “Noises Off.” Although it was made into a film, I advise you to stay far far away from that version. The play only works onstage. This is one of the few times I agree with Frank Rich, who “called “Noises Off” ‘the funniest play written in my lifetime’, [but] wrote that the film is ‘one of the worst ever made.'”
I’ve also seen and enjoyed it. Not only does it require supernatural timing and memorization from the actors, it’s also a physically demanding play.
I’ve seen “Noises” done really well, seen it done poorly, and performed in it in a production that fell somewhere in between.
The bad production had maybe the most creative of directors, and that was a problem. There was often too much occurring onstage at the same time, at least during the last two acts. It became tiresome and often drew the audience’s attention away from the action that should have held its focus at the moment.
Frayn has also written some wonderful novels, chief among them Sweet Dreams, Tin Men, and Towards the End of the Morning. And many years of being a newspaper columnist. And a couple of interesting forays into philosophy.
I haven’t seen the play but I found the film version hilarious. I’ve watched it seven or eight times over the years.
Rich’s claim the film is “one of the worst ever made” strikes me as entirely silly. The competition in that arena is both vast and deep.
Rotten Tomatoes shows a critic/audience score of 59%/80% for “Noises Off” suggesting the majority of people will enjoy the film, however great the play version might be.
I also enjoyed the Caine/Reeve matchup in the film version of the play “Deathtrap.”
I really enjoyed Copenhagen. The film isn’t bad, either. I’ll have to look for this one.
huxley:
That’s interesting.
I tried to watch the film but found it unwatchable. Just gave up. Maybe it depends on whether a person has already seen the play?
I figure, though, that if you liked the film you’ll LOVE the play.
I’ve never heard of any of this, but I had to look up the film, Noises Off. Peter Bogdanovich directed and the cast looks good.
Peter B. is as infamous for his bombs as he is famous for his hits. Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, and I really liked Cat’s Meow. IMDB has a score of 7.5 for Noises Off which is decent, and looking at user reviews, many love it to death. Peter B’s personal quotes section is pretty interesting too.
This sounds like a great play. I’ll make a note to see it. Or at least to read the script if I can find a copy. Maybe from Illinois.
I tried to watch the film but found it unwatchable. Just gave up. Maybe it depends on whether a person has already seen the play?
I figure, though, that if you liked the film you’ll LOVE the play.
neo:
Possibly. I find myself politically aligned with your posts over 95% of the time. Aesthetically, however, we are worlds apart. I don’t trust your aesthetic judgments at all.
It’s a fascinating question about how well film versions compare with the originals. Nonetheless, there have been books translated to film which drove me crazy, so I can take your point.
I wouldn’t call Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” unwatchable, but Jackson IMO betrayed Tolkien’s vision so thoroughly those films were close to unwatchable — like Wagner doing Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” as “Ride of the Valkyries.”
If I hadn’t read LOTR first I might have been happy with the films, but given that I had, I was horrified.
Maybe I would love the play “Noises Off.” I don’t assume so. In my experience theater-goers often overvalue the theater experience. I mostly notice the outrageous prices of theater tickets, which I won’t pay.
My main problem with the film “Noises Off” was the switching between “reality” and the play was less than seamless. I can imagine the play handling that better.
huxley:
My statement about the play vs. the film of “Noises Off” was not at all related to my general preference for the theater. “Noises Off” is a very special case, and I was basing it on that.
The entire action of “Noises Off” is supposed to be taking place in a theater, on a stage and behind a stage. When “Noises Off” is performed in the theater (as opposed to a film), it’s very real, because the setting of the play the audience is really watching in real time (“Noises Off”) is the same as the setting of every scene in the play, including the fake play they are supposedly rehearsing, etc.. It is an entirely theater-based play, more than any other play I can think of.
The only less-than-totally-“real” section is when the set is turned backwards, and we are seeing backstage. But that is far more “real” and believable than it could ever be in a movie, because the audience sees an actual stage set up like that, with the very real dimensions of an actual stage, and now the “backstage” illusion works very well spatially.
I don’t believe it’s possible to make a movie of this particular play that could ever be as good as a good production of the play in a theater, not because of some esthetic judgment about plays vs. films, but rather because of the unique qualities of this play and this play alone.
It’s not a stylistic thing, it’s a structural thing that depends on the structure of the play and the structure of a theater.
huxley Says:
January 22nd, 2018 at 5:59 pm
I haven’t seen the play but I found the film version hilarious. I’ve watched it seven or eight times over the years.
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I too have only seen the film and found it outrageously funny; if that is true, then the play is probably even better, for the reasons that Neo posits here
January 22nd, 2018 at 11:05 pm
I also agree with some of huxley’s later comment at
January 22nd, 2018 at 10:16 pm
that one’s enjoyment of a film versus the book or play may depend on which one is seen/read first. If you don’t know the source of the film, then there are no expectations that can be either dashed or exceeded.
I read “Heisenberg’s War” some years ago and was tremendously intrigued by the story (disputed by some) about his actions during WW2 in the German atomic program.
I thought at the time that there were distinct dramatic possibilities in his account (a novel, perhaps, or a film) but not specifically his trip to Copenhagen to see Neils Bohr, with whom he had studied after his doctorate.
I had not heard of Frayn’s play “Copenhagen” – will have to look for the script as it doesn’t seem to be in production anywhere near me (or anywhere?). There appears to be a PBS adaptation from 2002 that is remarkably unfaithful to the original, so I shall skip over it.
Love “Noises Off”. This new comedy from London now playing on Broadway gives it a run for it’s money. Same kind of deal. In the same family of comedies. Just to die for. British farcical comedy at it’s finest. If you want laugh, while waiting for the next great production of “Noises Off” come to NYC and see it. http://broadwaygoeswrong.com
Neo,
Thanks again for another astoundingly insightful post.
Also, as usual, the comments were first rate.
Some of the reasons that this website is one of my first morning stops.
My wife & I watched the film last night and we both laughed a great deal, though bits of it didn’t work well for me. My thought was that while John Ritter and Carol Burnett seem like naturals for the show, it seemed like Ritter mucked it up some.
Neo’s comment sounds like it is purely a spatial thing (stage vs film camera), but I noticed that there were occasions were Bogdanovich pushed in for facial close-ups, and some worked but many did not. I think those were mainly Ritter close-ups. His broad strokes from “Three’s Company” might have been OK from a distance but were too much for a close-up.
The budget for the film was $12M which wasn’t much even in 1992. I’ll bet stage actors have to rehearse for more than a month and the films actors did much less. How much do you have to pay Michael Cain to rehearse for a month?
I love Frayn’s quote that he wrote it because he felt like it, not even expecting it to be performed.
I too have enjoyed the movie version of Noises Off. Having read this review, I’ll definitely see the play if I have the chance.
The movie cast also included Christopher Reeve, and he was delightful to watch as a comedian. The list gives the name of the “actor” and the stage “role”.
The reviews at Wikipedia are uniformly thumbs down, but this probably captures the same feeling that Neo had:
In his review in the New York Times, Vincent Canby noted, “There are a number of hefty laughs scattered throughout . . . this woozy film adaptation” and added, “Noises Off is a practically perfect stage piece, constructed with such delicacy that any opportunistic adjustment can destroy it, which is what happens here . . . It may not even be Mr. Bogdanovich’s fault. He hasn’t opened up the play in any foolish way. There are even times when the camera successfully catches the tempo of the lunatic action without being overwhelmed by it. Yet too often the action and the dialogue are so fuzzily understood that the laughs are lost. The film’s problem is more basic: the attempt to Americanize a fine English farce about provincial seediness. It can’t be done.”
Cast. Michael Caine as Lloyd Fellowes. Carol Burnett as Dotty Otley / Mrs. Denholm Elliott as Selsdon Mowbray / The Burglar. John Ritter as Garry Lejeune / Roger Tramplemain. Christopher Reeve as Frederick Dallas / Phillip Brent. Nicollette Sheridan as Brooke Ashton / Vicki. Marilu Henner as Belinda Blair / Flavia Brent
Julie Hagerty as Poppy Taylor. Mark Linn-Baker as Tim Allgood
Inspired by this post and comments, Mr Whatsit and I just saw the movie version of Noises Off (it’s on Amazon) and enjoyed it — though it’s obvious that it would be much, much better as a play, performed live with no chance for retakes. We didn’t really start laughing until near the end, but could see the potential for brilliance shining through. We’d love to see it on the stage and will definitely do that if we ever get the opportunity.
I don’t believe it’s possible to make a movie of this particular play that could ever be as good as a good production of the play in a theater, not because of some esthetic judgment about plays vs. films, but rather because of the unique qualities of this play and this play alone.
neo: I threw out several ways to look at this issue, some of which were agreeable to your point of view, and you seized on this particular point.
Maybe in some ideal world a film can never approach the stage for this particular play. I doubt it, but maybe… I don’t much care.
My main point is the film — which you declared unwatchable and advised readers to stay “far far way from” — actually provides an enjoyable, even hilarious, experience for quite a lot of people, including myself and several commenters here.
That’s the ultimate way I measure comedies, on stage or on film. I’d say you got that wrong.
But fine. You’ve got your opinions and I’ve got mine.
Thanks for the last paragraph. I found the movie and said, “Wow, what a cast!”. See, I have more occasion to see movies than plays out here on the prairie, in my sod hut. 🙂
I love the movie, Noises Off. Hilarious. Frank Rich’s opinion was shared by a lot of critics. I can readily believe that Noises Off is even better live and that if one has seen it live, the movie wouldn’t appeal. But, the movie is all I’ve had the opportunity to see, so far.