With a stage and screen career now spanning more than 50 years, actor Matthew Kelly, who plays Selsdon Mowbray in this Theatre Royal Bath production direct from the West End, has been part of a fair share of touring companies and hosting theatres. As Noises Off takes us into the highs and the lows of a touring theatre company and while it’s certainly a drama, just how close does the story come to the real experience of life on the road?

“Touring plays is such a fantastic experience because you become a family, I love a company of actors,” he says. “You become very close to people because, particularly in a play like this one, you have to trust people you don’t know very quickly.

“So, for instance, in my part I come on kind of once every five to ten pages, say something funny and disappear off again. But I have to be on the side of the stage the whole time because unless you’re listening to it, you can’t just bob on, do one line, come off and go back to your dressing room. It’s so tightly choreographed and absolutely drilled into us what we need to do when. Otherwise you couldn’t do it. If you drop one line or if you forget something then the whole thing falls apart. It relies on everyone relying on everyone and that is pretty much what touring a play is like.

“I think Noises Off is what we would like to be true of a tour. When you see the backstage stuff it’s kind of enlarged for comic effect but that’s how Michael Frayn came to write it in the first place. He had written a one-act play about 42 years ago and he was backstage watching the actors from the wings and he thought what was going on backstage was funnier than what was going on in his play.

“There’s usually a lot of larking around on tour although there’s not a lot of hysteria as actors are generally incredibly supportive and kind. Or maybe I’m just busy having a lovely time so I don’t notice.”

And Matthew believes the audience would realise if the show’s cast and crew were at loggerheads behind the curtain.

“This is a great cast and that’s important,” Matthew says. “I have a thing about the spirit of a show and I think the spirit of a show comes over the footlights and it draws an audience in. It’s always very important to me that everybody gets on and has a good time onstage as well as offstage because I think an audience can always spot that and feel the warmth of that. And particularly on a show like this when everyone has to trust each other.”

Noises Off last year celebrated its 40^th anniversary as a stalwart of the stage – both professional and amateur. So why does Matthew believe the play has lasted so well?

“Noises Off is a genius piece of writing and Michael Frayn, who is now 89, has been with us from the start of this production and he is very supportive,” says Matthew. “He understands chaos and yet it is clever because it’s so interweaved.

“In the first act they are rehearsing the play and just being actors. In the second act you see the same thing only from backstage when they are actually on the road. And in the third act it’s the same play but from the front and on the road when the thing has completely gone to pieces. Audiences witness the progression not only of the disintegration of the play but also the disintegration of the people and their relationships.”

The story also makes use of the enduring theatrical device of the play within a play.

“A play within a play allows you to narrate certain sections which would be dull, you’re allowed to comment on the play itself and each other, and it allows for greater comedy in exploiting the foibles of actors – which is never not funny,” says Matthew. “People always love to laugh at actors.

“What’s so thrilling about good writing in theatre is that the audience feels like they’re part of it, or at least a fly on the wall watching it and that’s what I love about theatre.”

Matthew has a long association with Noises Off as he was considered for a part in its early days on stage.

“Forty years ago on the first takeover, I was up for the part of Garry Lejeune which is the driver of the play,” he says. “But I couldn’t have done it at the time.”

And although he has seen the hit comedy since, it has taken him 40 years to perform in Noises Off, taking the part of Selsdon, an elderly actor who enjoys a tipple or two.

“My character is great, he’s an old drunk so I’ve based my entire career on the part! I’m digging deep for it and I’ve done a lot of research!” laughs Matthew. “I love the part for lots of reasons. One is that he’s the oldest in the company and people are quite respectful of the elderly but also he’s somebody who is really sweet and really annoying at the same time and has absolutely no idea what’s going on. It’s my kind of part.

“But it does have its challenges – running up and down stairs and climbing in and out of windows when I’ve got two new hips for example. It’s physically quite hard.”

The current production premiered at Theatre Royal Bath last autumn before playing the West End earlier this year.

“The West End was packed and people just so wanted to be entertained by a brilliant play and that company were just marvellous,” says Matthew. “To see a theatre packed like that after a pandemic was wonderful.

“It’s the kind of theatre that we need. It’s joyful, it’s exciting, it’s intelligent, it’s a thrilling piece of theatre and it will have people absolutely rocking in their seats.

“I’ve watched with the audience because my first entrance is not until half-way through the first act so I sit at the back of the stalls watching them laughing. And because it has got so many different layers to it, people are laughing at so many different things at the same time and it’s very rare in a farce that you can see that. Even I still laugh at it and what it does.”

Interview by Diane Parks

Noises Off is at the Theatre Royal Bath from Tuesday 19^th to Saturday 23^rd September as part of a UK tour.

To book tickets contact the Theatre Royal Bath Box Office on 01225 448844 or visit www.theatreroyal.org.uk

Photo credit: Pamela Raith Photography