Haddonfield Plays & Players Goes for Gold with Noises Off
- 20 hours ago
- 6 min read
by Ash Kotter
We’ve now since closed the door on the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, but Haddonfield Plays & Players has opened seven new ones for us and launched into its own team precision sport: Olympic-level comedy.
I’m truthfully more of a casual Olympics observer than an avid follower. It’s not that I don’t marvel at the athleticism that defies gravity and common sense. I just never made a tradition of watching the games with any regularity…
… except for curling. Good God, I am irrationally obsessed with curling. I don’t even really know what’s going on, but I care not. Everyone's faces are so very intense while someone in a gliding, dramatic lunge pushes a rock on a handle down an ice alley. Then suddenly everyone's screaming at each other with world-ending urgency! WHOA! HARD! YUP! YAHHUUPPP! Followed by AGGRESSIVE SWEEPING with Olympic Swiffers! Fast and furious sweeping and elbows flailing! What does the sweeping do? It gets the rock in the circle? Or near the circle? Are we trying for the bullseye? Is someone keeping score? I assume someone is keeping score. I’m not watching for the score! More sweeping! More yelling!
Curling looks absurd. But it’s actually chess on ice, a combo of physics and chaos. And if you’re familiar with the show you came here to read about, you probably see where I’m going with this analogy…
Like curling, farce is deceptively hard. It looks random, but it’s actually angles, proximity, and a push-and-pull between explosion and restraint. Hailed as “the funniest farce ever written,” Michael Frayn’s Noises Off is a bad play wrapped inside of a good play (“Nothing On” = bad play // Noises Off = good play). A backstage comedy where actors play actors playing characters, and where coordinated door slams, very important plates of sardines, intentionally flubbed lines and snafus, and split-second timing require literal athletic comedic accuracy and technical prowess. And under the direction of Al Fuchs, the entire company of Noises Off at HPP “puts it in the house.”
Not to beat the Olympics comparison to a pulp, but in terms of performance execution, Noises Off is less like curling and more like synchronized swimming: it’s so thrilling to watch because no single performance can carry it. My own humble opinion of the play is that its success depends on everyone agreeing to the same set of rules, with each player knowing their lane and staying squarely in it. The playwright builds the machine, the director calibrates it without trying to improve it, and the cast has to trust the blueprint and each other fiercely. Rush a cue or overplay a joke, and the entire structure tilts.
Al Fuchs is no stranger to this blueprint, having directed Noises Off two times before, and several members of this company have taken this particular plunge with him more than once. That familiarity is felt in a great way because the trust is palpable to the audience, and their formation as a unit holds strong.
If you’re unfamiliar, every cast member is really playing two roles at once. There’s the “real” character, and then there’s the character they’re playing in a terrible little farce called “Nothing On” that they’re trying (and failing) to perform. The comedy lives in the gap between those layers, and in the ensemble’s commitment to one of the golden rules of theatrical humor: it’s funniest when you play the truth.
Jenn Colleluori doesn’t chase laughs with Dotty’s flubs. Instead, she lets them stack, and when the whole thing starts to combust, she simply stops apologizing and lets it rip, which feels far more dangerous (and more fun). As the chronically inarticulate Garry Lejeune, CJ Kish makes a whole meal out of half-finished sentences, using physical comedy to make sure we always understand the jealousy and urgency Garry himself struggles to… “well, you know?”... making the switch between actor and character feel like a theatrical costume change rather than a personality trait.
Brooke Ashton may be a terrible actress, but Sara Vattimo is pitch-perfect behind the joke of it all. Brooke barrels through the script melodramatically and exactly as rehearsed, no matter what chaos erupts around her, while being oblivious to almost everyone else around her when out of character. On the flip side, Jessica Doheny’s Belinda reaches for every improv choice she can think of to keep the wheels (or doorknobs, rather) from falling off, and is in tune with everyone else around her as the resident cast gossip. Flashing a fixed grin and performative posturing, Doheny’s Belinda literally believes she is the glue on and offstage. Freddy Fellowes has to be sweet, literal, and faint-at-the-sight-of-blood fragile, and Bobby Walker commits so fully that bunny-hopping up the stairs with his pants around his ankles is less of a physical bit and more of a logical Freddy mental pathway.
The sleep-deprived SM of “Nothing On,” Tim Allgood, is running on fumes, and Jared Camacho has this natural vocal rhythm and way of moving about space that hilariously contributes to that frazzle. Assistant SM Poppy lives in a constant state of backstage panic, and Cara Horner grounds that anxiety, at her best in the frantic, slightly combustible dynamic opposite Tim. The character of Selsdon can easily drift into indulgence, but Joe Carlucci sharpens the selective deafness and missed entrances, and his bit never overstays its welcome. And the director, Lloyd Dallas? Kumar Dari’s irritation simmers, so when it finally snaps, his explosions give us some of the night’s biggest laughs.
Choosing to mount this show at all is choosing to accept the technical gauntlet that comes with it. See, Noises Off isn’t a piece you can concept your way around with a minimalist “MacGyver” version that you hope actually works. The script has demands, and the tech must meet those demands as the vehicle that enables the comedy. Ernie Jewell’s two-level revolving set is nothing short of an engineering and logistical feat. Seven doors, multiple playing levels, and the entire structure has to rotate to reveal its reverse side, transforming into a fully functional backstage playing space where the actors must execute the same blocking “on stage”… only backwards, with sightlines flipped and entrances inverted. The set dictates the action, functioning less like scenery and more like a working member of the cast.
In a play where timing is everything, backstage precision isn’t a nice-to-have. Noises Off requires mountains of cues, crossings, handoffs, and potential disasters packed into three acts (with two intermissions), which is probably more than most productions see in a full season. Here, the stage management team (Casey Clark, Tara Romanelli, and Dylan Ehrman) maintains the entire operation without visible strain. Costumes, designed by director Al Fuchs, do exactly what they need to do, and do it well: define the archetypes cleanly, with little details like Freddy’s sock garters establishing character quickly and thoroughly. Lighting (Eric Baker) keeps things simple and effective, which is exactly right for a show this busy. The lighting design doesn’t compete with the chaos. Act II, in particular, requires a delicate balance, with backstage action unfolding in one visual world while the “onstage” performance glows behind the rotated set in another. Noises Off is also a show of stuff… LOTS of stuff. And that stuff is critical to the comedy! Sardines, newspapers, phones and the wires and whether they’re attached or not, whiskey bottles, mop buckets, bag bag bag. Every prop is both a punchline and a liability, and the props team (Robert Colleluori and Lisa DiBruno) handles the sheer volume with impressive discipline.
In his director’s note, Fuchs writes about the obvious need for laughter right now, and about leaving your worries behind and just enjoying the ride. That’s not unlike why we watch the Olympics in the first place. It’s winter. It gets depressingly dark early in the evening. The world feels loud and tense. And for a few hours, we gather to celebrate people doing something incredibly hard exceptionally well.
Come for the giggles, and stay for the theatrical Olympics and mastery under pressure. And if this company has anything to say about it, you’ll leave lighter than you arrived. Noises Off at Haddonfield Plays & Players has now been extended through March 8th! Tickets here, and grab them fast! Given the way this house is selling, you’ll miss your chance if you don’t snag ‘em soon: https://www.haddonfieldplayers.com/tickets
