Michael Frayn Critical Essay | Critical Review by Katharine Worth

Critical Review by Katharine Worth

SOURCE: Worth, Katharine. “Farce and Michael Frayn.” Modern Drama 26, no. 1 (March 1983): 47-53.

In the following review, Worth asserts that Frayn proves himself a master of the stage farce with Noises Off.

“Is God?”, asks Professor George Moore in Stoppard's Jumpers. “Is farce?” might be a question for today's theatre and for the same reason that bothers Moore and his wife, Dotty, in their speculation on God. How can farce exist in a society which has lost all its certainties and loosened all the rigid social and moral structures which were the launching pad for the farces of the past? The special pleasure of the form, as Eric Bentley has said, is that “Inhibitions are momentarily lifted, repressed thoughts are admitted into consciousness, and we experience that feeling of power and pleasure, generally called elation” (The Life of the Drama [New York, 1970], p. 230). But how if...
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