FIVE STARS

The Old Vic’s 2011 revival of a play very different in character from that reviewed here (click here) — Michael Frayn’s comedy Noises Off — brought the theatre company its biggest box office hit and first transfer to the West End.

Now, in the penultimate week of a long tour, director Lindsay Posner’s well-crafted production has audiences crippled with laughter at the Wycombe Swan.

Frayn famously makes a two-pronged attack on the funny bone by delivering the cheesiest of farces in a sub-Ben Travers style (Nothing On) while simultaneously giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the personality clashes and general chaos involved in a touring company’s rehearsal and production of it.

Behind-the-scenes literally, for in the second act Peter McKintosh’s set turns round to reveal the antics — considerably more outrageous than what’s on stage — of those working on the production.

The ever-reliable Neil Pearson is on superb form as the exasperated director trying to keep control of (and in two cases bed) the touchy band of thesps. These include a deaf old boozer (Geoffrey Freshwater), a myopic bimbo (Thomasin Rand) the loss of whose contact lenses at inopportune moments becomes a running joke (but not one with the legs of the sardines so prominent in the play) and a short-tempered leading man (David Bark-Jones) who turns into an axe-wielding maniac when his old trooper of a lover (Maureen Beattie) starts to look elsewhere.

The strength of the ensemble work here can be gauged from the fact that his victim was played on Tuesday’s opening night by understudy Brendan Hooper with no discernable detriment to the show.

At home later more fun awaits, with time to savour the brilliant spoof programme (packed with relishable pseudery) supplied for Nothing On.