'Frayn's construct is based on the principle that if farce involves watching the wheels come off a well-oiled machine, then nothing could be funnier than seeing the wheels fall off a farce itself... Pure comedy gold.' * Alfred Hickling, Guardian, 26.2.09 *
'Michael Frayn's deleriously funny comedy about actors in crisis is probably being produced somewhere in the world every week of the year.' * Jeremy Kingston, The Times, 21.05.10 *
'Another of Frayn's regular motifs surfaces here, the mayhem that results when precise order breaks down.' * Jeremy Kingston, The Times, 21.05.10 *
'Is Michael Frayn's farce about a farce the funniest play ever commited to paper? It would certainly be in my top 3.' * Robert Dawson Scott, The Times, 22.06.10 *
'You have to hand it to Michael Frayn. He is nothing if not electric. It is scarcely beleivable that he is the author of Copenhagen (a deeply philisophical play about the politics of science) and this most famous of modern English farces, Noises off.' * Mark Brown, Sunday Herald, 13.06.10 *
As finely worked as a Swiss watch and as funny as the human condition permits..the zigzag brilliance of the text as the clunky lines of the farce-within-a-farce rub against the sharp dialogue of reality. -- Michael Billington * Guardian *
Genius farce..achingly, foot-stompingly, seal-honkingly hysterical. Frayn has written more serious plays but none more profound. Only Noises Off captures the baffling resilience of human existence. -- David Jays * Sunday Times *
A spot on parody..achieves an almost mathematical elegance as Frayn calculates all the many and varied ways in which it can all go wrong. Noises Off is cunningly structured. ..Noises Off offers an infallible escape in to happiness. -- Charles Spencer * Daily Telegraph *
Michael Frayn's play feels fresh, witty and polished. It is a triptych that illuminates the fragility of drama and the relationships of those who create it. It is entertaining and painful - a summation of all that farce can do. -- Henry Hitchings * Evening Standard *
There has never been a more brilliantly conceived machine for helpless laughter than Michael Frayn's 1982 classic Noises Off.. ..deliriously funny.. -- Paul Taylor * Independent *
Many claims have been made for Michael Frayn's award-winning Noises Off, including that it's the funniest play ever written. The skilfull structure of the piece means the performance builds and builds.. -- Julie Carpenter * Daily Express *
It's comic bliss. -- Georgina Brown * Mail on Sunday *
A brilliant farce set behind the scenes of a dreadful one..a richly detailed tapestry of catastrophe. -- Andrzej Lukowski * Time Out London *
Frank Rich loved it, 'Noises Off', said the great N'Yawk critic, 'is, was and always will be the funniest play written in my lifetime'. Frayn's orchestration of his materials is dazzlingly skillful. -- Lloyd Evans * Spectator *
Imagine a comedy so definitively comic that there seemed no point in ever writing another. I cannot think of another play which has quite so obviously been written by a comic genius. ..a jaw-droppingly clever piece of work. -- John Nathan * Jewish Chronicle *
remains a laughter-generating machine * Stage *
Michael Frayn's first-rate farce about a farce follows a second-rate troupe stating a third-rate British sex comedy . . . widely thought . . . to be the funniest play every written . . . It is, to put it academically, a metafarce - a farce about a farce - into which Mr. Frayn has inserted a near-literal turn of the dramatic screw whose ingenuity borders on genius . . . To say that nothing goes right for them is to understate the case by a factor of . . . oh, ten thousand. [...] flawless. If laughter is the best medicine, then 'Noises Off' is surely capable at the very least of curing double pneumonia. * Wall Street Journal *
a classic farce and a fiendishly ingenious homage to the form . . . raucously delightful * New York Times *
this kind of comedic brilliance never gets stale. * Variety *
not just one of the funniest plays ever written but one of the best. * Vulture *
