A New West actor is front and centre in the Arts Club Theatre Company’s next production.
Colleen Winton is onstage in Michael Frayn’s classic farce Noises Off, onstage Jan. 23 to Feb. 23 at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage.
Often hailed as the funniest farce ever written, Noises Off treats audiences to a peek at a second-tier acting troupe performing a show. With egos, insecurities and tempers flaring backstage – not to mention forgotten lines, missed cues and misplaced sardines onstage – the cast threatens to strike the old adage “the show must go on.”
Winton appears as the has-been actress Dotty Otley, who plays a Cockney maid in the play-within-the-play, Nothing’s On. She follows in the footsteps of a number of comedic Broadway luminaries who have played the role before her – Dorothy Loudon, Carol Burnett and Patti LuPone among them.
She’s surrounded by a cast of eccentric characters including Lloyd Dallas (played by Andrew McNee), the disgruntled director of the play-within-a-play – who happens to be tangled up in a love triangle with stage manager Poppy Norton-Taylor (Ming Hudson) and actress Brooke Ashton (Tess Degenstein).
They’re joined onstage by Charlie Gallant, Andy Maton, Nora McLellan, Emma Slipp and Jovanni Sy.
Ashlie Corcoran, artistic director of Arts Club Theatre, says Frayn’s script manipulates and celebrates the tried-and-true qualities of farce and, in the process, creates a “genius love letter to theatre.”
“The piece requires a kind of comedic precision – creating verbal and physical patterns – that I know our director, Scott Bellis, will knock out of the park,” she said in a press release.
Tickets start at $29, available through www.artsclub.com or the box office at 604-687-1644.
