Noises Off is a bedroom farce, and a play within a play. The action follows a struggling touring theatre company as they rehearse and perform Nothing On, a sex comedy involving mistaken identities, slamming doors, and plates of sardines as problematic props.

Act 1 depicts a frantic dress rehearsal where director Lloyd Dallas battles forgotten lines, timing issues, and interpersonal tensions among the eccentric cast.

Act 2 shifts to a matinee performance one month later viewed from backstage with romantic jealousies, props going missing, physical fights, and props like sardines causing slapstick havoc while the onstage show barely holds together. Relationships fracture further.

In Act 3, near the end of a gruelling 10-week tour the production is in ruins: scenery breaks, props are scattered, and cast members ad-lib desperately amid arguments and exhaustion, leading to a hilariously incoherent finale as they cover up the total breakdown.

By Michael Frayn
Director Stephen Macken

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Slamming doors. Falling trousers. Flying sardines. A cast at war with itself, a set that’s losing the will to stand – it can only be Michael Frayn’s gloriously unhinged farce, Noises Off.

KATS, Galway’s award-winning theatre company, is set to perform this “comic masterpiece” (The Daily Telegraph) at the Town Hall Theatre from Wednesday 27th May to Saturday 30th May at 7.30pm, and in a first for KATS, there will be a 2.30pm matinee on the Saturday.

Widely regarded as the funniest farce ever written, Noises Off follows the hapless cast and crew of Otstar Productions as they stumble, bicker, and barrel their way through rehearsals and performances of their own sex comedy, Nothing On.

Through three acts, following the rehearsals, the show’s run, and the final night, Noises Off delights in the chaos and catastrophe of backstage bickering, collapsing sets, warring egos, mounting disasters, and errant herrings. As The New York Times said, this is “the most dexterously realised comedy ever about putting on a comedy”.

KATS are well experienced in staging comedy, as Noises Off follows last year’s hugely successful and hilarious production of Arsenic and Old Lace, directed by Stephen Macken and produced by Linsey Cant. Macken and Cant again take up director and producer roles, respectively, for this production. The cast is Michelle Lyons, Dave Langan, Mervyn Fahy, Aisling MacAree, Lydia Gard, Declan J Gardiner, Yvonne Lydon, Joe Keenan, and Patrick Boyle.