Nobody can do menace quite like F. Murray Abraham, a man born to inhabit sinister.The actor expertly demonstrates how in "Mauritius," Theresa Rebeck's slick, often unconvincing new play that can't quite make up its mind about what it wants to be. Abraham isn't even the...

It's strangely involving to watch actors struggle heroically in a ludicrous play. When absolutely everything goes wrong on stage, as when everything goes right, we're treated to drama that is urgent, spontaneous, unmistakably alive. Yet whoever heard of a play in which both extremes of theatergoing pleasure occupy the same stage at the same time? That's what happens at Michael Frayn's "Noises Off."… All three acts of this play recycle the same theatrical cata...

I hate to be a habitual dissenter regarding all these celebrated British imports—but I'm afraid Noises Off failed to get my pulse racing…. Watching this carefully manufactured laugh machine was like spending three hours staring into the works of a very expensive, very complicated Swiss clock—impressive workmanship, but for how long can one look at revolving wheels, moon disks, and star dials?… I seem to remember that Lewis Mumford once declared the clock to be the key mach...

Noises Off is a farce, the form of drama which is most difficult to read and most easy to dismiss from serious consideration. But such doubts should not deter any reader. Like Frayn's earlier comedies, this farce arises from a shrewd and, even, intellectual engagement in life and work in England today. Frayn is always aware of the expectations of his characters and comic disasters are so contrived that complacencies and hopes are constantly challenged and motivations defined. In this latest work Mich...