Lindsay Posner to Direct NOISES OFF at The Old Vic

Noises Off , Michael Frayn's multi award-winning 1982 comedy, previews at The Old Vic from 3 December, with a press night on 13 December. Lindsay Posner directs. Noises Off - a hilarious play within a play - follows the amateur touring production of a dreadful sex comedy Nothing On, as it travels around the country. From the disastrous dress rehearsal with the cast still fumbling with entrances and exits and bothersome props, to the final performance of missed cues
and forgotten lines, Noises Off portrays the explosive personal relationships that have led to off-stage shenanigans and on-stage bedlam.

The play premiered at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith in 1982, directed by Michael Blakemore and starred Patricia Routledge, Paul Eddington, and Nicky Henson. It opened to universally ecstatic reviews and shortly after transferred to the West End's Savoy Theatre, where it ran until 1987 with five successive casts. It won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy and the Olivier Award for Comedy of the Year.

Michael Frayn was born in 1933 in the suburbs of London and began his career as a reporter on The Guardian, then becoming a columnist on the same paper between 1959-1962 and The Observer from 1962-68. For the stage his work includes The Two of Us, Alphabetical Order, Donkeys' Years, Clouds, Balmoral, Make or Break, Noises Off, Benefactors, Look Look, Here, Copenhagen, Democracy and Afterlife. He has published ten novels, including Spies, Headlong, Towards the End of the Morning and Now You Know, together with two philosophical works, Constructions and The Human Touch. His novel, Spies, was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize (2002) and won the Whitbread Award for Fiction (2002). Headlong was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize, the Whitbread Novel Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. His most recent book, My Father's Fortune: A Life was published by Faber & Faber in September 2010 and shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Biography Award and winner of the PEN/Ackerley Prize 2011.

Lindsay Posner was Associate Director at The Royal Court Theatre from 1987 to 1992 where his
production of Death and The Maiden won two Laurence Olivier Awards. His other theatre credits
include Butley starring Dominic West (Duchess Theatre), An Ideal Husband starring Samantha Bond and Rachel Stirling (Vaudeville), House of Games (Almeida), Fool For Love starring Juliette Lewis (Apollo Theatre), Arthur Miller's A View From The Bridge starring Ken Stott (Duke of York's, nominated for four Olivier Awards), Carousel (Savoy), Fiddler on The Roof (Sheffield and Savoy), Tom and Viv, The Hypochondriac and Romance (Almeida), A Life in the Theatre (Apollo), the world premiere of Power by Nick Dear and Tartuffe (National Theatre), Twelfth Night, Volpone, The Taming of the Shrew and The Rivals (RSC).
Casting to be announced.
Director Lindsay Posner
Designer Peter McKintosh

http://www.oldvictheatre.com/