Noises Off
Pitlochry Festival Theatre

THERE is an inexplicable plate of sardines in the centre of Michael Frayn’s farce, Noises Off.

No-one knows why they are there, or what they signify, and they keep getting forgotten, or dropped, or used as weapons as the show falls apart in the hands of a jaded provincial rep company.

There is also a telephone that comes apart from its handset like a cursed prop, a box of tax receipts and a blue BOAC travel bag. And a slippery contact lens. There are noisy stairs, ill-constructed doors and a group of sexual opportunists playing, well… a group of characters hoping to have it off in a tastelessly overblown country retreat.