“Noises Off” By Michael Frayn

This year, there’ll be all manner of "Noises Off", on and round the Onassis Stegi stage. Welcome backstage: to the place where every attempt at rationality backfires. Where dark instincts emerge from the shadows and roles — like zombies — devour the actors.

“That's what it's all about, doors and sardines. Getting on, getting off. Getting the sardines on, getting the sardines off. That's farce. That's — that's the theater. That’s life”. Michael Frayn’s "Noises Off" (1982), the play which has won the Olivier, London Evening Standard, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards, is staged here by a superb ensemble cast (Konstantinos Avarikiotis, Michalis Kimonas, Giannis Klinis, Sofia Kokkali, Emily Koliandri, Ektoras Lygizos, Anna Mascha, Aris Balis, Areti Seidaridou).

Five years after "Room Service", Ektoras Lygizos returns to the Onassis Stegi to direct —and play the director— in the classic British farce which sits us backstage in a theater and invites us to ponder on this: “What happens when everything goes wrong?”

An impressive stage set, a human hive abuzz with insults and misunderstandings, the actors forget their lines, the director rages, the costumes fall apart, and the sardines, the axes and the bouquets of flowers are always in the wrong place at the wrong time...

A play within a play, a farce within a farce, cock-up piled on cock-up. A hymn to error on the Main Stage of the Onassis Stegi, 10-27 October.

A madcap production from a director who warns us that: “In this production, backstage, the quintessential space of disaster and chaos, takes over the stage, expansive and voracious...”.

At weekends 13-14 and 20-21 October 2018 with English surtitles.

Credits

Translation, Adaptation and Direction: Ektoras Lygizos

Set Design: Kleio Boboti

Costumes: Alkistis Mamali

Lighting Design: Dimitris Kasimatis

Movement - body/physical preparation: Chara Kotsali

Make-up & Hair Design: Ioanna Lygizou

Sound Design: Brian Coon

Assistant Director: Eva Vlassopoulou

Assistant Set Designer: Eleni Aidoni

Assistant Costume Designer: Alexandra Giannakandropoulou

Set Construction: Panagiotis Lazaridis

Women's Costumes Construction: Eleni Komninou

Men's Costumes Construction: Giorgos Parliaros

Production Manager: Electra Arzimanoglou

Executive Production: Grasshopper

Produced by: Onassis Stegi-Athens

Cast: Konstantinos Avarikiotis, Michalis Kimonas, Giannis Klinis, Sofia Kokkali, Emily Koliandri, Ektoras Lygizos, Anna Mascha, Aris Balis, Areti Seidaridou

Special thanks to Giorgos Axiotis.

Special thanks to Xenia Kalogeropoulou, Stamatis Fasoulis and Anna Panagiotopoulou for coming up with the Greek title for "Noises Off" and allowing us to use it.

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Michael Frayn (b. 1933) is a British writer, novelist and essayist who is celebrated in the theater primarily for the farce "Noises Off" (1982) and the historical dramas "Copenhagen" (1988) and "Democracy" (2003). Michael Frayn has admitted that the idea for writing "Noises Off" came to him while he was watching the premiere of one of his first works from the wings. “It was funnier from behind than in front!”, he thought. Michael Frayn started out as a journalist, where his satirical columns for the Guardian and the Observer are fondly remembered to this day. He is considered one of the most eminent English translators of Chekhov. "Noises Off" (1982) has won the Olivier, London Evening Standard, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards. In 1992, it was made into a film by Peter Bogdanovich, starring Carol Burnett, Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve.

Ektoras Lygizos is a theater director and filmmaker. He started out making short films — "Interior with woman peeling apples" (State Award, 2002) and "Pure Youth" (Venice Film Festival 2004) — before directing his first work for the theater, "Gary Owen’s The drowned world" (Amore, 2005).

This is the second time he has directed for the Onassis Stegi — the first was the farce "Room Service", by John Murray and Allen Boretz in December 2013.

He has staged nearly twenty plays, including works by Aeschylus, Euripides, Beckett, Chekhov, Ibsen, Verdi, Jarry, Koumendakis, Walsh and Matesis at the Ancient Theater of Epidaurus, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the National Theater of Greece, the Greek National Opera, the Athens Festival, the National Theater of Northern Greece, the Theatro tou Notou (Amore Theater), Neos Kosmos theater, Bios and elsewhere.

With his first feature-length film, "Boy eating the bird’s food" (2012), he took part in over 50 international festivals, receiving 15 awards and distinctions, including Best Film from the Greek Film Academy. The film is a loose adaptation of Knut Hamsun’s novel "Hunger" and was filmed in down-town Athens (Exarcheia and Kypseli) in just one month.