Noises Off Author:Michael Frayn Noises Off is not one play but two - simultaneously a traditional sex farce, Nothing On, and the backstage farce that develops during Nothing On's final rehearsal and tour. The two farces begin to interlock, as the characters make their exits from Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare going on backstag... more »e, and exit from that only to make their entrances back into Nothing On. In the end, at the disastrous final performance in Stockton-on-Tees, the two farces can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into one single collective nervous breakdown. Noises Off won both the Evening Standard and the Olivier Awards for Best Comedy when it was first produced, and ran in the West End for nearly five years. Michael Frayn's most recent play, Copenhagen, won both the Evening Standard Best Play Award in London and the Tony Best Play Award in New York. Michael Frayn (b. 1933) is an English playwright. In Noises Off Michael Frayn creates an ingenious play-within-a-play farce. The on-stage play is a dreadful bedroom farce called Noises On in which scantily clad young ladies are being chased in and out of continually opening and slamming doors by old men. The backstage farce develops during the play’s final rehearsal and tour as the characters make their exits from Noises On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare going on backstage and then have to go back again on stage to Noises On. In the end the two farces can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into one single collective nervous breakdown. Written by a man with a vision... Recommended.”Library JournalThe funniest play written in my lifetime”Frank Rich, The New York TimesFrayn’s construct is based on the principle that if farce involves watching the wheels come off a well-oiled machine, then nothing could be funnier than seeing the wheels fall off a farce itself. Pure comedy gold.”The Guardian« less