NOISES OFF Broadway 1983

[morosco]

Posted: 10/2/06 at 1:43pm

The show remains the funniest thing I have ever witnessed on a stage. It didn't hurt that I saw the show cold. It didn't hurt that Dorothy Loudon was brilliant! But what I want to know is if anyone can remember the sequence of events at the Top of Act III. I remember there being some very funny business with the curtain. Here's how I remember things happening. Correct me if I'm (probably) wrong.
1. Houselights fade to black
2. Curtain rises on the set (with no actors present) and we hear the phone ringing
3. Phone stops ringing when we hear a loud cacophony of crashing objects backstage
4. Audiences laughs
5. The laughter dies down
6. Silence....nothing is happening
7. Audiences begins to laugh again because nothing is happening.
8. Then the phone starts ringing again
9. Dotty comes limping onstage to answer it

Did the curtain come back down between 3 and 4 above?
Does anyone remember eactly?

[ILoveMyDictionary]

Posted: 10/2/06 at 1:50pm

I never saw the show, but in the script it goes like this.

The curtain goes up to reveal the tabs of the Municipal Theatre Stokton-on-Tees. A Half empty whisky bottle nestles at the foot of them. The introductory music for Nothing On. (As the music finishes the tabs begin to rise. A foot or two above the stage level they stop uncertainly, hover for a moment and fall again. Pause. The introductory music starts again and is then faded out. Enter Tim from the wings.

Tim then begins to say all that Ladies and Gentlemen stuff. Dotty and Belinda are heard fighting backstage. Poppy's voice is heard on the loudspeaker overlapping Tim in speaking. Then Dotty comes limping onstage and says "It's no good you going on...." Then the phone rings.

[morosco]

Posted: 10/2/06 at 1:56pm

Ohh. Now that adds a new angle to it. I do remember the curtain stopping a couple of feet above the stage and then going back down. I don't remember that Tim business though.