Word: scripting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Jane Nichols' direction, with the undoubtedly invaluable aid of stunt choreography by Thomas Derrah, keeps the staging under control while allowing the cast to unleash the script's zaniness...
Jessica Fortunato throws herself into the brassy gold pumps of Dotty, the aging theater veteran whose career and savings ride on the success of the tour. Dotty, however, is all too aptly named. Her earnest but inept struggles with the comings and goings of the script's schools of sardine props become a running joke. While clinging to her borrowed British accent as the apple-cheeked housekeeper, she mightily struggles to keep them in line...
...haunt him as "Nothing On" strays farther from its course. His vague gestures and unfinished thoughts, sweetly endearing in rehearsals, mark him as a hopeless ad libber, degenerating from his tag "you know" to a helpless "who knows?" by the third act when the play no longer resembles its script. Garry's realization of his plight is the image of very actor's nightmare as, sweat pouring down his face, he stares out at the beady eyes of the house in horror, his mouth gaping for the lines that simply won't come...
Jessica Walling's wide eyes equally express her character with their blank blue stare. Brooke Ashton is the company ingenue, who is as far from ingenious as the rest of the cast is from their script. Though Brooke is able to put aside her space cadet personality to become the perky Inland Revenue tax secretary of "Nothing On," she is too fragile to roll with the punches when the ride gets bumpy. Oblivious, she sticks to the script, blindly thwarting the others' efforts to ad lib in the face of disaster...
HRST nearly does the impossible in giving Frayn's script the dual-leveled comedic chaos it demands. "Noises Off" is a guaranteed evening of laughter, and ends the adventurous HRST season with a successful staging gamble. It is also the last chance Harvard audiences may have to claim recent graduates Fish, Guillory, Lithgow and Walling as their own before others discover them...