Byline: Jim Murphy

THE SORT of split-second timing required for farce is at its best when tied to the reaction of a live audience. It is perfected only under combat conditions and is hard to pull off on film because the actors are playing to a camera, which rarely laughs. This is why the Marx Bros used to prepare comedy routines by playing them first live in theatres and recording the timing by stop-watch so they could duplicate in the studio pauses for the laughter. An added pitfall that faced Peter Bogdanovich when turning Michael Frayn's West End and Broadway hit Noises Off (M, Touchstone) into a film is that it is a backstage (and onstage) farce about actors putting on a play. It is, therefore, ideal for playing in a theatre and nigh impossible on film to duplicate the play's superb conceit: audience watching actors playing actors performing to an audience. What is more, rapid simultaneous exits and entrances through different doors (a piece of cake in the theatre) are a headache for the film director because cutting from one to the other cannot convey the desired effect, cutting being such a staple technique of film-making. Rapid panning, about the only alternative, is what Bogdanovich adopts but it is clumsy at best. The fact that Noises Off did not get a cinema release in Australia suggests it performed unsatisfactorily at the US box-office, but do not be put off. Bogdanovich (whose second hit, don't forget, was the farcical What's Up, Doc?) directs it with verve, his cast is surprisingly good and some of the tricky business with props and pratfalls is hilariously executed. Michael Caine has great fun playing Lloyd Fellowes, director of a bad play that is first encountered at its dress rehearsal in Des Moines, Iowa, first booking on a national tour prior to Broadway. We meet the cast as they stumble through Act One, fluffing lines, misplacing props, losing contact lenses and generally letting all their insecurities hang...