Tattle Tales
By Lenny Traube

THE DEFINITIVE BACKSTAGE FARCE: It’s replete with a cast of nine headed by Jane Curtin (star of TV’s "Saturday Night Live" and "Third Rock From The Sun") who for two and one-half hours dash on and off stage, opening and slamming doors, in Michael Frayn’s hilarious comedy, "Noises Off" at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. Curtin leads an all-new cast in the comedy hit, which originated in Britain 20 years ago, moved to Broadway for a lengthy run and returned to Broadway last November with an American cast headed by Patti LuPone and Peter Gallagher. For the hitherto sell-out hit, I was able to get two on the aisle because of this debut of the brand new cast.

Part of the show’s appeal is its putting the audience in close contact with what happens to a British touring company from dress rehearsal to a disastrous last night production of the sex comedy, "Nothing’s On." Every onstage mishap that can happen does, as the cast desperately tries to remember their lines and give their performances. The result is a side splitting descent into chaos in what is "the funniest show on Broadway," according to the New York Post’s Clive Barnes.

With this new cast, the focus of the play has shifted from the two major roles played by Curtin and the show’s bored director (Leigh Lawson) onto the ensemble. Rightfully so, because this is an ensemble to reckon with. The most alluring of these is the bodacious beauty, Kali Rocha (Brooke Ashton), who spends all of her considerable onstage time garbed in naught but bra and panties. One of the funniest scenes is when she gets down on elbows and knees to find a lost contact lens. Rocha’s gesture for gesture performance is enough to make it easy to forget that of her predecessor, the Tony Award winning Katie Finneran.

With the remainder of the cast at times surpassing their predecessors in maintaining the hysteria of the play’s final climactic scene, this is easily an ensemble equal to the one that opened last November.

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