Noises Off at Ottawa Little Theatre

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2. Noises Off

The play premiered at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London in 1982, to universally ecstatic reviews and shortly after transferred to the West End's Savoy Theatre in The Strand, where it ran until 1987 with five successive casts. It won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy.

Noises Off has become a staple of both professional theatre companies and community theaters on both sides of the Atlantic. Frayn has continually rewritten the play over the years, the last time being in 2000. There are numerous differences between the scripts published in 1982 and 2000. Some new sequences have been added (e.g., an introduction to act three, in which Tim, the Company Stage Manager, and Poppy, the Assistant Stage Manager, make simultaneous apologies — the former in front of the curtain, the latter over the PA — for the delay in the performance). Other sequences have been altered or cut entirely. References that tend to date the play (such as Mrs. Clackett's to the Brents having colour television) have been eliminated or rewritten.

Many people agree, it is the funniest play ever written.