The hilarity is spot on in riotous `Noises Off'.

Byline: Review by FRED CRAFTS The Register-Guard

THAT NOISE emanating from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Agnus Bowmer Theatre is the unrestrained laughter and applause for Michael Frayn's hilarious farce "Noises Off."

Director Kenneth Albers leaves no comedic stone unturned in this goofy romp that follows members of a struggling theater company backstage. The opening-day audience laughed so much, and so loudly, it frequently was difficult to hear the dialogue.

This production is so busy that it can be taken in for its sight gags alone. If ever there was a laugh riot, this is it.

In fact, the first act is so side-wrenchingly funny, it is difficult to imagine how the next two acts can be any better. But they are.

The setup is simple: We are at a rehearsal of a sexy British farce called "Nothing On." It's not going well. Dotty old TV star Dotty Otley can't remember her lines or what she is supposed to do with a plate of sardines that figures prominently in the plot.

Eager to get the touring show on the road, the other actors - the oblique Garry Lejeune, the brainless Brooke Ashton, the hypochondriac Frederick Fellowes, the peppy Belinda Blair and the drunken Selsdon Mowray - join the director, Lloyd Dallas, in going over and over the scene, with increasingly disastrous results.

Act 2 occurs a month later. This time, the set has been rotated so we can see the shenanigans that transpire behind the scenes while an actual performance of "Nothing On" is done on stage (which we can see through a large window in the center of the fake set). By now, the oddly matched actors have developed intense love and hate relationships that nearly sink the performance.

But if you thought that was bad, wait until the final act. It occurs another two months later, at the final performance of "Nothing On," when just about anything that can go wrong, does.

Frayn has provided an inspired blueprint for tomfoolery, and the actors make the most of it by slamming doors, making faces at each other, doing pratfalls and employing just about every comedic device ever invented.

As funny as it all is, Albers has achieved a surprisingly touching result. Although the characters are none too deep, they are deep enough to cause sympathetic reactions when they get into scrapes.

However, there's little time for sympathy in Albers' can-you- top-this, gag-a-minute, fire-drill production. In fact, there are times when so many actors are on stage hamming it up at once, it is impossible to take it all in.

Everyone in the gifted acting company provides bright spots and gives solid support to the others.

Cudos to Michael Hume as the long-suffering director, Dee Maaske as a washed-up TV star, David Kelly as an actor who can never quite say what he means and Tyler Layton as a young woman who confuses modeling with acting.

Also excellent are Richard Howard as a sensitive soul whose nose bleeds when he gets worked up, Catherine Lynn Davis as a perky actress trying to keep the peace, Becky Meyer Corbett as a simpering stage manager, Christopher DuVal as an overworked stagehand and Richard Elmore as an old, hard-of-hearing booze hound.

The cast is an ensemble of uncommon quality that tears through one madcap scene after another, enlivening one inspired bit after another.

Much credit for the authenticity of the situation goes to scenic designer Victor Becker, who has provided highly detailed sets that rotate to reveal both the interior of a mansion (as a faux stage set) and then its backside.

Sets this intricate - and productions this amusing - don't come along every day.

CAPTION(S):

Frederick Fellowes (Richard Howard) is caught with his pants down in `Noises Off.'