Noises Off

In his author’s note, Frayn explains that Noises Off began as a short one-actor play titled Exits. A full-length version commissioned by Michael Codron premiered in 1982 at the Lyric Theatre in London. It starred Patricia Routledge, a Tony-award-winning actress who was later made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II, as Dotty. Paul Eddington, a British sitcom actor, played Lloyd. The play had a revival in 2000 in England, and in 2001, it opened in New York in the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. In this American production, Dotty was played by Patti LuPone, who starred in Agatha All Along and Steven Universe, and Lloyd was played by Peter Gallagher, who played a ballet director in Center Stage (2000) and its sequels.

In 1992, between these productions, the play was adapted to film by United Artists and Touchstone Pictures. It stars many famous actors of the period: Carol Burnett as Dotty, Sir Michael Caine as Lloyd, and Christopher Reeve as Frederick. While this film differs from the original play in many ways, it is the most well-known incarnation of Noises Off and reached a wider audience than the stage productions could. The film version has a distinctly different setting, ending, and framing device than Frayn’s play. The setting is New York. Screenwriter Marty Kaplan also added another production of Nothing On on Broadway that Lloyd walks out of, nervous that it will be another disaster, at the beginning of the film. At the end of the film, he returns to the theater to discover that this performance of Nothing On is a great success. His voiceover also gives the characters happy endings: Dotty ends up with Selsdon, Garry ends up with Brooke, and Lloyd marries Poppy, who is shown pregnant while on stage during the bows on Broadway.