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Noises Off
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Act IIIChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act III Summary
The setting is the Municipal Theater in Stockton-on-Tees, a provincial town in the north of England. The view is of the stage, from the audience’s perspective.
The curtain rises a couple feet and then falls again, revealing a whiskey bottle. The introductory music starts and stops repeatedly. Tim comes out on stage to apologize for the performance starting late. As he speaks, the audience can hear Belinda and Dotty yelling at each other about Frederick backstage and hear sounds of physical violence. As Tim finishes his announcement, Poppy makes the same announcement over the speakers. Tim notices the whiskey bottle and takes it backstage with him.
Dotty, as Mrs. Clackett, limps on stage, the sardine plate in one hand and sardines in the other. The set phone fails to ring when it should, and she glares at it until it starts to ring. After putting the sardines on the plate, Mrs. Clackett answers the phone, talking about the Brents being in Spain. She puts the plate down next to the newspaper, uses one section of it to wipe her hands, and accidentally covers the plate with the rest of the newspaper. During these problems, Dotty distractedly diverges from Mrs. Clackett’s lines several times. After winding herself in the phone cord while looking for the plate, Dotty sits on it. She delicately removes the plate from under herself. She notices some of the newspaper sheets on the floor, goes to pick them up, and drops the sardines off the plate. Dotty is supposed to exit at this point but is trapped on stage because of the tangled props. She hides the sardines on the floor with the paper and then walks off stage holding the plate, some of the newspaper, and the phone. The base of the phone jumps along behind her, still on stage by the door.
Garry enters as Roger with Brooke as Vicki. They say their lines claiming that they have the place to themselves as the phone base continues to move around. Garry tries putting the phone back on the table, but it jumps off again, pulled by its cord. It continues to move around during Roger and Vicki’s dialogue about the house. Flustered, Garry struggles to deliver the script’s flirtatious innuendos correctly, leading to several double entendres. Garry pulls on the phone cord, and it comes on stage, but without the receiver. When Vicki exits, he tosses the phone and cord off stage after her. Dotty comes on stage with the receiver and is unsure where to put it. She says, “Never lost a phone before” (143), and puts the phone on top of the television.
Dotty improvises to play Mrs. Clackett cleaning up the set rather than delivering Mrs. Clackett’s dialogue to Roger about why he is at the Brents’ house. In response, Garry improvises to give his character’s information, leading to a series of non-sequiturs between the two characters. Dotty tries to clean up the sardines on the floor, but she doesn’t have a plate to put them on. Brooke comes on stage as Vicki, but when Roger goes to introduce her to Mrs. Clackett, he slips on the sardines. Vicki carries on with her usual lines, unable to improvise, while Roger has to work around Mrs. Clackett still not delivering her lines. Mrs. Clackett continues talking about the sardines and then exits. As Brooke sticks to the script, Dotty reenters with a mop as Mrs. Clackett, saying that she’s going to clean the sardines off the floor.
Dotty finds that the mop bucket is hiding a bottle of whiskey. As Mrs. Clackett, she moves this to the sideboard. She gives the mop to Garry/Roger and exits off stage. He puts the sardines in the newspaper, puts the bundle on a table, and tries to mop the floor. Brooke can’t diverge from the Nothing On script and won’t help Garry with the mop. He has to abandon it to take the bag and box off stage, as required by the script. Garry/Roger comes back on stage for the mop just as Frederick is making his entrance as Philip. Frederick delivers Philip’s line about being alone in the house while Garry/Roger runs upstairs and struggles with the door to the bedroom. Finally, he exits.
When Belinda enters as Flavia, she is holding the telephone and improvising lines about finding it outside. Frederick also improvises Philip’s lines as he tries to put the base of the phone on the table. The phone is still connected to its cord, which is tangled around the set. Belinda and Frederick improvise lines to explain their characters’ actions while getting the phone through various imaginary rooms. They return to the script about Inland Revenue, but when Frederick/Philip exchanges the phone for the newspaper, he realizes that it is filled with sardines. As he struggles to deliver his lines, he slips on the greasy spot on the floor and distractedly puts the bundle of sardines on the sofa. Belinda improvises, filling in the dialogue that Frederick is unable to deliver.
Frederick improvises that he is going to lie down. Belinda works this into the dialogue, which includes flirting, and manages to move the sofa over the greasy spot on the floor. Frederick/Philip leaves his bag and box in the wrong place on stage and exits. Belinda/Flavia takes the mop and bucket upstairs on stage. Dotty/Mrs. Clackett enters, talking about sardines. Improvising, Belinda/Flavia tries to warn Dotty about the sardines in the newspaper on the sofa. Belinda/Flavia tries to convey all the necessary information in the script so far as Dotty/Mrs. Clackett rants about someone leaving sardines for her to sit on. Frederick/Philip returns to stage, and Dotty/Mrs. Clackett talks about the sardines in their package from Sardinia. Frederick/Philip exits. Dotty/Mrs. Clackett puts the newspaper with the sardines down Belinda/Flavia’s dress, and they both exit.
Garry enters as Roger, correctly delivering the lines about voices, but he trips over the bag and box that Frederick/Philip wrongly left behind. Brooke can again only say Vicky’s lines from the script as Garry improvises Roger’s lines to explain the bag and box. He gets back to the script by the point of Mrs. Clackett’s entrance. Dotty/Mrs. Clackett is pulling sardines out of her dress and modifying her lines to explain about sardines. When Garry/Roger tries to open the door of the linen closet to conceal Vicki, the bag and box are in the way. The door handle breaks off. Garry/Roger moves the bag and box, gets Vicki into the closet, and balances the handle back in the door.
As Dotty and Garry try to continue with the script, Frederick/Philip’s offstage line, “Oh good Lord above!” (153), is accompanied by the sound of Frederick falling down the backstage staircase. Dotty/Mrs. Clackett mimes this noise too, using parts of the set to make a crashing sound, and pretends that her exclamation was due to the study door being open. Garry/Roger takes the bag and box off stage. Belinda enters as Flavia and tries to lock the linen closet door as in the script; the handle comes off in her hand, and she takes this off stage when she exits.
It is now time for Frederick’s entrance as Philip, but Frederick is injured. Tim comes on as Philip with Dotty/Mrs. Clackett. He delivers the lines about the letter from Inland Revenue. Mrs. Clackett asks Philip what happened to him (to explain the noise), and he improvises lines about falling down the stairs and being shaken up. Dotty/Mrs. Clackett exits in concern about Frederick, and Tim calls her back on stage, trying to get back to the right position in the script. Dotty/Mrs. Clackett gets back to her lines, which say that she needs to make sardines, but sees that the sardines are on stage, not off stage as her lines indicate. Dotty improvises, saying that she needs to make more, and exits.
Belinda/Flavia comes back on stage with both Vicki’s dress and the door handle and works the latter into her dialogue. As Belinda/Flavia tries to fix the door handle behind her back, she continues her regular dialogue, and Tim delivers Philip’s lines until his exit. Belinda/Flavia takes the handle off stage, saying that she’ll take it to the attic. Garry enters as Roger and delivers his correct lines in response to Vicki’s knocking from the closet, until he discovers that the door handle is missing. Garry improvises Roger’s lines, trying to explain that the door won’t work and hinting to Brooke/Vicki to come out through another door. Brooke misses the hint, and Garry/Roger has to go into the bedroom door to physically fetch her out onto stage.
Frederick comes on stage and delivers Philip’s lines, but these are from the previous scene that Tim already performed. Brooke continues to deliver Vicki’s lines exactly as they are in the script, while Garry improvises to explain how they got around to the other door. Frederick/Philip apologizes and exits. Brooke/Vicki and Garry/Roger finish their flirtatious dialogue and exit. Frederick/Philip tries entering again and repeats the previous lines about the letter from Inland Revenue. In response, Brooke/Vicki and Garry/Roger come back on stage, and Frederick/Philip once again apologizes and goes backstage. Belinda/Flavia enters and, following the script, calls for Philip, who comes back on stage and starts to raise the letter again. He is interrupted by Vicki and Roger’s next entrance. Frederick/Philip goes backstage.
Brooke sticks to Vicki’s lines as Garry improvises Roger’s to accommodate all the props being the wrong items or in the wrong place. When he gets to his line about the sardines being missing, he sees the sardines still on stage and swears. As Garry/Roger walks around the set, Belinda comes in through the front door, on her hands and knees, and takes the sardines backstage. Garry then has to improvise lines about sardines appearing and disappearing because of ghosts. Brooke/Vicki continues to follow the script and exclaims about the bag—that isn’t on stage. Belinda replaces the sardines. Brooke/Vicki continues to exclaim about the missing bag, and Garry/Roger replies by repeating the word “sardines.”
Belinda belatedly puts the bag on stage: When Brooke/Vicki at last starts exclaiming that it is gone, it is finally present. As Garry/Roger starts to put the bag backstage, Belinda hands him the box. He has to improvise about the bag and box being moved by ghosts instead of his usual lines about them being missing. Brooke/Vicki continues with the lines about not having her dress—although this is accidentally on stage, upstairs. Garry/Roger puts down the bag and box and then attempts to scoot the dress off the stairs and onto the floor. It falls on Brooke/Vicki, causing her to lose a contact lens. When Garry/Roger tries to go to Brooke/Vicki, he trips over the bag and box and falls down the stairs.
Frederick enters as Philip and once again begins to repeat the lines about the letter. He stops when he sees Garry/Roger. Belinda/Flavia comes on stage, and Frederick gets a nosebleed in response to Garry’s injury. Dotty/Mrs. Clackett comes on stage, sees Garry/Roger, and improvises a line about him being dead. Garry comes to and, confused, continues with Roger’s lines about the apparently ghostly activities having some rational explanation and going to fetch Mrs. Clackett.
In response to this, all the other actors start to improvise around what has happened, led by Belinda. Belinda improvises Flavia’s lines, saying that she will explain since they are all in a state of shock over discovering Roger on the floor. Belinda/Flavia recommends that they begin by introducing themselves. She mentions that her husband, Philip, struggles with nosebleeds. Brooke appears on stage at the wrong time, still missing a contact, and Belinda/Flavia suggests that she go look out in the garden and pushes her off stage. Belinda/Flavia suggests that Philip get the poison to deal with the glue. This causes Frederick to say Philip’s line that is the burglar’s cue. Tim comes onto the crowded stage as the burglar, delivering the burglar’s lines about being alone. Dotty/Mrs. Clackett welcomes him, and Belinda/Flavia exclaims that meeting a burglar is exciting. Frederick/Philip tries to cover by saying that he caused the burglar to come on stage and then repeats the line that is the burglar’s cue.
On this cue, Selsdon comes on as the burglar, repeating the lines about the lack of security in the house. Tim and Selsdon both begin the burglar’s monologue together, and Belinda/Flavia encourages them to keep going. Selsdon thinks she says “stop” and breaks character, saying that he thought he was in the clear to enter because he heard his cue. He asks for the line, and Frederick/Philip repeats it once again. Lloyd enters as the burglar and starts delivering the monologue. Tim and Selsdon say the monologue with him.
Belinda/Flavia interrupts, takes off Lloyd’s burglar’s hat, and declares that he is their social worker and will tell them what to do. She has a plan to improvise an ending but must communicate this to the others while on stage. Lloyd gets stage fright and is unable to improvise. As he motions silently, Belinda/Flavia interprets his gestures as carrying on for the doors and sardines because they are what the performance is all about. Lloyd and the others repeat, “Doors and sardines!” (166). The cast catches on to Belinda’s plan and runs around grabbing sardines and opening doors. Belinda/Flavia says that Lloyd’s gestures now mean phones and police. Lloyd repeats the words “phones and police.” Frederick/Philip and Garry/Roger operate the two halves of the phone. Belinda/Flavia lists other props, still supposedly interpreting for Lloyd. Lloyd and the cast repeat the items: bags, boxes, and sheets.
As the cast collects sheets, Flavia declares that Lloyd’s gestures mean that they just need a happy ending. Garry/Roger wraps Brooke/Vicki in a sheet, and Tim comes on stage with Poppy, wrapping her in the sheikh’s robes. Dotty/Mrs. Clackett says that Poppy is in her wedding dress, and Belinda/Flavia declares that it’s their wedding day. Dotty/Mrs. Clackett pushes Poppy next to Lloyd, and Belinda/Flavia pushes Brooke/Vicki to the other side of Lloyd. Dotty/Mrs. Clackett asks if Lloyd takes the sheet to be his wife, and Lloyd nods because of his stage fright. Belinda/Flavia interprets this as him saying they need the last line. Selsdon can’t remember the last word of his line: What is on the plate that consoles people during hard times? The other cast members hold up the multiple plates of sardines and call for the curtain.
Tim runs off stage to bring down the curtain. It stops lowering just above the actors’ heads. They reach up and pull, and it tears, falling down on them all.
Act III Analysis
In Act III, the stage set is rotated by 180˚ again, back to showing the stage set view, similar to Act I. In this case, the perspective is that of the paying audience for Nothing On. On the page, Act III of Noises Off is formatted as if it is the script of Nothing On, with character dialogue and stage directions only; the only offstage action is that perceived as the eponymous “noises off” by the audience. Similarly, Frayn uses the character names from Nothing On until understudies have to be differentiated. This Nothing On script format is a conceit, however, as the text of Noises Off in Act III is a depiction of what actually happens during this performance of Nothing On, not the script of what should happen. As the action and dialogue diverge increasingly from the original Nothing On script, these become the improvisational responses of the Noises Off actor-characters, not those written for the Nothing On characters, collapsing the distinction between the two narrative levels. The stage directions, presented as being within the Nothing On script, are in fact Frayn’s stage directions for the real Noises Off actors and for the reader of his text. The tripartite structure of Noises Off has moved the play full circle through the perspectives of the audience (real and imaginary), the Noises Off characters, and the Nothing On characters, in order to explode the illusion of the theatrical construct, exploring the theme of Theater Reflecting Life’s Own Absurdities and Complexities.
In Act III, Frayn heightens and disrupts The Repetition and Doubling Involved in Farce in order to bring the comic tension to its apex. Mirroring Act II, Tim and Poppy continue to double the announcements to the audience, but this time, Tim goes out on stage to make his announcement. They both “apologize for the delay in starting” (138-39), but one of them does it in person, while the other does it over the speakers. This ramps up the farcical comedy. Another moment when something backstage is repeated on stage is Philip’s line, “Oh, good Lord above!” (153). Unlike previous performances, there is “[t]he colossal sound of Philip falling downstairs, off, taking half the platform with him, followed by a wailing groan” after this line (153). This means that Dotty as Mrs. Clackett has to imitate the sound to assure Roger that there are no ghosts: “She crashes thing about on the sideboard in imitation of the off-stage crash and ends the performance with a wailing groan” (154). The farce of her simply repeating the same words is subtler than when she imitates a series of sounds. Lowering her pitch, she can imitate the simple phrase, and it is vaguely convincing. However, the series of sounds is clearly not from her, and this heightens the level of farce in its obviousness. Here, Frayn exposes the suspension of disbelief that theater audiences adopt, stretching it past its breaking point for comic effect.
These devices rely on the audience’s—or reader’s—understanding of the two simultaneous levels of the play, having been primed by the preceding two acts to recognize its role as the audience of both the fictional Nothing On—and the increasingly desperate interventions of the cast as they try to keep the play going—and Noises Off itself. Frayn’s repetitions and doubling therefore have a formal purpose, enabling the reader or audience to compare the differing versions of Nothing On for comic and satirical effect. This escalates as the Nothing On script increasingly breaks down, including the double entendres on which that script relies for much of its humor. In Act I, Roger’s lines, “[W]e’ll only just manage to fit it in. I mean, we’ll only just do it” (17), have a stereotypical double meaning that is both funny in itself and sends up the nature of the English bedroom farce. In Act III, at the same point of Nothing On, Garry says, “Yes, we’ll only just manage to pick it in. I mean, we’ll only just fit it up” (142); distracted by the mishaps, he fails to deliver the sexual joke, although the original import of this line is intended to be remembered by the audience or reader who is now familiar with it. Instead, Frayn substitutes a different Freudian slip—Garry’s, not Roger’s—which scrambles his sense of the need to pick up the props and fit in the lines. This is an example of how Frayn has built up three levels of humor by Act III: that of the original Nothing On line, that of the new line, and that of the comparison between the two.
Frayn also concludes the theme of The Relationship Between Personal and Professional Lives of Actors in Act III. The front-of-house perspective means that the audience can only hear—or be told—what is happening backstage. By the end of Act III, interpersonal drama leads to the destruction of people, props, and the script on stage, as well as backstage, carrying the “real” lives of the cast onto the stage. It also leads to multiple understudies and building confusion about who is who within the cast—and at the imaginary audience level. When Tim explains to Mrs. Clackett that “[h]e’s just a bit shaken. [He]’ll be all right in a minute” (154), he muddles his pronouns, breaking out of character to accidentally refer to Frederick, not Philip. This language mirrors the structural disintegration of the demarcation between personal and professional as Nothing On approaches complete collapse. As the intended script and action disintegrate, the actors-characters are increasingly forced to improvise and thus appear increasingly to the audience as “themselves”—i.e., as Belinda or Frederick—rather than as their Nothing On characters. Those who are unable to improvise, such as Brooke or Lloyd, are also perceived increasingly at that character level, as their inability to act responsively exposes them on stage. The professional mask of their Nothing On characters is increasingly withdrawn, showing the desperation of their personal selves.
In Act III, Frayn concludes the theme of theater reflecting life’s own absurdities and complexities. When Belinda takes the lead toward the end of the act, her onstage solution mirrors the offstage dynamics within the company. She comes up with the “happy ending” of a wedding, but it has two brides—Poppy and Brooke—because Belinda and Dotty are at loggerheads about who should “marry” Lloyd. The backstage love triangle between them is manifested on stage in an absurd way. The need for a “happy ending” also satirizes the character’s desperate wish for the play to come to an end. This ending is not “happy” because it is thematically joyful but simply because it is an ending. At this point, Frayn concludes the symbolism of the sardines to emphasize the comic absurdity of the ending. At the very end of Noises Off, Selsdon once again forgets the last word of Nothing On, “sardines,” by now a running joke in Noises Off. Instead of supplying it verbally, his co-stars hold up the many plates of sardines that multiplied throughout the performance, reverting to mime in irony or in exhaustion. With this final breakdown of theatrical language, Frayn invites the Noises Off audience to supply the word “sardines”—whether silently or out loud—creating one last reversal.
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