As Michael Frayn’s most well-known and probably most-produced play, Noises Off is his tour de force, a brilliant and hilarious sendup of the traditional British sex farce and of the play-within-a-play. Often called the King Lear of farces, Noises Off rekindled farce as a form and pays tribute to such predecessors as Georges Feydeau, Ben Travers, Arthur Pinero and Eugène Labiche. As John Simon observed, “In Noises Off, we have the pleasure of seeing a once thriving but lately moribund genre come alive again to shake us with laughter and even improbably, shake us up into a little peripheral thought.”
With its sharp wit, masterful wordplay, and sardonic …
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Citation: Blansfield, Karen. "Noises Off: a play in three acts". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 June 2019 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=20696, accessed 19 April 2024.]
