My search has paid off. I have found Ben Brantley’s review of Noises Off, which I talk about in my post earlier today. One of the two shows which opened in the wake of September 11, and which became massive hits. What I loved about Brantley’s review, as I remembered it, was how he acknowledged that humans need catharsis … and laughter, at that time, was the best catharsis possible. It was an affirmation of life. Of possibility. The shows in question may be imperfect, but at that particular time, none of that mattered.
For your enjoyment, if you care, here are some quotes from that well-written review Here is how it opens:
Breathlessness, vertigo and that scary-sweet exhilaration of being out of control: there are few highs to equal the experience of floating in the upper altitudes of comedy. In the spectacularly funny new revival of ”Noises Off,” Michael Frayn’s peerless backstage farce, there are moments when everyone — onstage and in the audience — seems to be riding the same runaway roller coaster.
This can be unsettling. After all, what’s being portrayed is a group of perfectly likable people falling apart. And then on every side of you are theatergoers barking, howling, hooting — well, choose your zoological verb; it’ll fit. If someone had thought to replace screams with laughter in the days of primal therapy, this is probably what it would have sounded like.
A paragraph later, Brantley hits the nail on the proverbial head:
For theatergoers in New York, the brave and beleaguered world capital of control freaks on the verge, this disciplined rendering of chaos starts to feel like an exorcism. There was a reason, you realize, that the meticulously frantic ”I Love Lucy” was so beloved in the atomic age.
That is IT. Yes.
He goes on:
Catharsis comes in surprising packages these days. Who would ever have thought three months ago that the most emotionally stirring shows in Manhattan would be a sincerely kitschy musical set to the songs of Abba (”Mamma Mia!”), an earnest story-theater rendering of Greco-Roman myths (”Metamorphoses”) and a dizzy, well-known romp like ”Noises Off”?
…”Noises Off” — well, it allows you to laugh, loudly and wantonly, at a world in which everything seems out of joint.
Brantley ends the review with:
‘Noises Off” multiplies the Feydeauvian use of doors for complications and disorder. Every time one swings open, or fails to, this production ups the catastrophe quotient. And for whatever reasons, this artificial depiction of everything going wrong — of disaster lurking behind and leaping from every doorway — provides you with a tremendous feeling of release. This may not be what Aristotle meant by catharsis. But whatever you call it, it feels good.
Damn straight.
