This is not a play many American actors will have the chance to do, but knowing about it may help American actors understand other British comedies. And possible audition monologues could be made by connecting some of its short speeches.
The first thing to notice is that the characters are innocent, none of them harms anyone, and the audience will be in the mood to laugh because they realize nothing bad is likely to happen. This is also true of many American comedies, but the British idea of ‘innocence’ is different. It includes a lot of politeness!
Characters may be about to lose their temper, but manage to keep perfectly polite! The plays of Tom Stoppard and David Hare often need actors to play these British, middle-class characters who stay very well-mannered however annoyed or angry they may feel inside.
British comedy also mostly avoids ‘rough’ language, but this is not a sign of Brits being ‘uptight’. There is an idea in the USA that Brits are often scared of ‘bad language, and that they are mostly rather old-fashioned. But the UK is the birthplace of Oasis, The Sex Pistols, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and many British plays and films may have what seem like shy characters who are quite mad inside.
An example in this comedy comes when a male character finds that his trousers have fallen down in front of strangers, and – for good reasons – he cannot manage to pull them up. PHILIP somehow thinks his naked legs might not be noticed, even by people standing near to him, and that the situation will just ‘go away’. He may look a bit worried, which he should be as he is also unable to use his hands! He has spilled super-glue over them, so one is stuck to a very private letter and the other to a plate of sardines, neither of which he wishes to lose! Unfortunately his wife has now given him a ‘chemical cleaner’ to remove the glue, but he is finding that the chemical burns through his trousers when he begins to pull them up. But his problem is not fear of chemical castration, it is of looking undignified in front of his wife.
In an American comedy (play or film) PHILIP would probably have hysterics. The great actor Gene Wilder – even greater on the stage than on film – would have had a fit, and thrown himself into a pool. And in the film FATAL ATTRACTION, when Michael Douglas’s trousers also fall to his ankles at the start of a love scene – which he is sure Glen Close wants – and he waddles like a penguin towards her inviting arms, trying to stay confident despite his ridiculous, baby steps, and Glen Close calmly waits for him to reach her, and we know that some kind of physical contact is still likely, but in a British version he would fall over and Glen Close would have to wait.
This is a play where several characters want sex, but none of them is going to get it. And PHILIP is pretending that everything is fine.
This shyness and politeness is what makes a British accent sound truthful in the mouth of an American actor, and is a part of dramatic parts in plays and films as well. In a British film about war or violent crime characters may hide their physical pain or fear by keeping what is often ‘a stiff upper-lip’: and this may sound the same as Americans hiding their feelings with ‘gritted teeth’ , but there is a difference.
It is the attitude, the ‘way’ that Brits hide their problems which actors like Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson and Colin Firth manage so naturally. When Clint Eastwood, in a ‘war movie’, is “gritting his teeth”, he is hiding the fact that he is in pain from being shot, controlling his anger, and probably insisting that doctors look after his other comrades first. But a British hero, like James Bond, makes sure of looking quite calm when hiding his pain, for it is one of the ‘rules’ of a British ‘gentleman’, – which has existed for hundreds of years, that for James Bond to be gritting his teeth would not be polite!
It is the same for Philip with his trousers in this play. He will do his best to smile and laugh because he is polite, because he doesn’t want to upset anyone!
For those who do not know this play, NOISES OFF is about a group of terrible actors – not just unprepared, but stupid! – who are trying to rehearse another play called NOTHING ON. Their rehearsal is full of mistakes, because the set – shown in the picture below – has several doors, and a flight of stairs leading up to more doors, so it’s very easy for the actors to go through the wrong door and get lost!
What keeps their stupidity interesting for the audience is that during the intermission, – when the audience has returns and watches, – the entire set is turned round, showing what is happening backstage. And the actors are then seen unable to remember which door they should use to enter!
In an early scene, – copied below, – a young man called ROGER is trying to get VICKI, a stunningly beautiful young woman from the local village, to follow him upstairs to ‘have some champagne’. She seems very willing, and – a few years ago – might have been called a ‘dumb blonde’. But a modern audience would (or should) be embarrassed to see a woman portrayed as ‘dumb’, so her character has to be played as extremely innocent, with no idea of how very attractive she is, and that he dangerous choice of clothes may have just been a mistake.
VICKI has in fact only just met ROGER, and is following him upstairs only because he asked her to and she is polite . She completely believes that he wants to show her the house, and get some champagne. He has pretended that he owns the house, to impress her, but is a realtor employed to sublet the house while its owners are away. He does not know which of nine doors leads to a bedroom, where he wants to lead Vicky, and at the start of the scene has mistakenly pushed her into a bathroom . All of this, of course, appears to be innocent, because ROGER is a polite idiot!
VICKI: (coming out of doorway) It’s another –
ROGER: No, no, no.
VICKI: Always trying to get me into bathrooms.
ROGER. I mean in here.
(He nods towards the next door, VICKI leads the way in, ROGER follows.)
VICKI: Oh, black sheets!
ROGER.: (Pulling her out) It’s the airing cupboard. This one, this one!
(He drops the bag he has been carrying, and struggles to open another door along the gallery)
VICKI: Oh, you’re in a real state! You can’t even get the door open.
This is a play for ‘family’ audiences, so any progress Roger makes is interrupted by an accident. And VICKI is not looking for sex, and she only wears her revealing clothes because she thought there was going to be a party at the house, and has a pink miniskirt, with a fluffy top. She believes that Roger owns this huge house because of her good nature, as she would trust anyone else, and would only end up having sex with ROGER if they were engaged to be married . And this play is a farce, so – in short – nothing much that is sensible is going to happen !
“NOTHING ON” – that’s the name of the play which the helpless actors are trying to rehearse – is packed with awkward situations, and when Vicki cries out “It’s another bathroom” – she is not complaining about Roger pushing her about, she is shouting with excitement about the house having two bathrooms! Everything is wonderful from her point of view, and she would never complain about the number of bathrooms in somebody else’s house, as it would be impolite! And ROGER would never make an aggressive ‘move’ on her, so she feels safe and continues to be well-mannered when she comes out of the second bathroom.
I have coached a few actors with audition monologues made by collecting together short speeches in this play, and all they have needed from me was to remind them to be polite all the time!
Roger sounds desperate when he shouts – “No, no, no!”- but he is not angry, he is only frustrated at not finding a bedroom. He is trying to keep calm but can’t help shouting at fate for being so unkind. For the first time in his life, probably, he has a female companion who seems willing to go wherever he asks, and he tries to smile, but is actually scared that VICKY will realize he is falling apart. So he may turn away from her when he shouts, because all he wants – like the characters in the Noel Coward play discussed above – is to feel in charge for a moment!
Like the lines in so many plays there is only one thing for actors to work out, – either by hours of study, or help from a coach,- all the actors need to know is what has made them say their line, and what they pretend to mean when they say it. That is how the best, winning, most successful actors, in every single one of the most popular USA tv shows, manage to keep viewers (or live audiences) excited. Full stop.
BELINDA, the long-suffering wife of PHILIP, is similar to CLAIRE, the wife in Ayckbourn’s play INTIMATE EXCHANGES, (discussed below). DOTTY, the hard-working housekeeper in NOISES OFF is like CLARA in Coward’s HAY FEVER. LLOYD, the director of the play ‘NOTHING ON’ which is being rehearsed, wants to take charge all the time in the same egotistic way that Lady Bracknell aims to in THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. And POPPY, the young, apparently shy and vulnerable stage manager in NOISES OFF, is like the sweet, helpless Sandy, the nicest of the guests in HAY FEVER .
