Plot
The film follows the concept of a play within a play, in this case a dreadful farce Nothing On — the type of production in which many doors continually open and shut. The setting has been transplanted from the backcountry of Great Britain to Des Moines, Iowa, where a second-rate theatrical troupe is preparing to perform the Broadway-bound play under the direction of Lloyd Fellowes. Among the cast members are fading star Dotty Otley, scatter-brained actor Garry Lejuene, insecure matinee hearthrob Frederick Dallas, myopic leading lady Brooke Ashton, second female lead Belinda Blair, and alcoholic character actor Selsdon Mawbray. Frantically working behind the scenes are Tim Allgood and Poppy Taylor.
The film opens with the final dress rehearsal before opening night, with the cast still forgetting lines, missing cues, and mishandling props. Lloyd is reduced to cajoling, yelling at, and pleading with them to get things right. Complicating matters are the personal problems and backstage relationships that have fostered jealousy and petty squabbling and intruded upon any professionalism this motley crew can muster. As the company works its way to New York City, the eccentricities of the cast come to the fore and the performances on the road dissolve into chaos on and backstage.
Read more about this topic: Noises Off (film)
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“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)