Making all the right noises

You have to hand it to Mossley AODS: apparently foolhardy was their decision to stage Michael Frayn’s notoriously difficult Eighties farce, but they pull it off better than anyone could have expected.

Frayn’s show-within-a-show-takes the genre by the scruff of the neck and gives it a good kicking, showing us the final rehearsal and performances of a terrible end-of-the-pier comedy, “Nothing On”.

Like a master builder constructing an intricate house of cards, Frayn shows us the cast in the final stages of chaotic rehearsal in act one, then plays his master stroke by turning the set back to front, showing us the cast’s-side view and running the same act a second time at manic speed after a month of touring.

Then he turns the set round again and plays the same act a third time, with the cast into their third month and final stop, some players close to breakdown, others desperate for it to be over.

Seeing the same thing three times should be a bore — but it is generally reckoned to be one of the funniest shows ever written.

The comedy is so easy to get wrong: the second act has a 15-minute, virtually wordless scene filled with such precision and physical detail that it is metaphorically a master class in how to write knockabout slapstick. Mack Sennett would have been proud.

The problem is getting it right, achieving the devilish timing and keeping up the momentum for the entire act.

Mossley’s cast has a huge advantage over professional companies: they are playing it only for a week.

So Tom Varey knows he will chuck himself downstairs too few times for fate to decree he breaks something — probably — while James Schofield can throw himself into fainting at the sight of blood, and Sue Widdall can run around after plates of sardines at any speed she likes.

Mossley’s cast, directed by Brian Ganderton, and packed with a fearless ensemble whose members (the rest are Sarah Griffiths, John Fletcher, Kerry Newton, Chesney Talbot, Sofi-Jo Bennett, and Steve Maxfield as the fake show’s director) have a work rate that would shame a typical pro cast. Only occasionally is dialogue lost in the rush.

But they shine in that second act and are remarkably good in the third, which can come as a bit of an anti-climax. You will be tired out just watching them.