A true delight: Joy, expertise combine in Steppenwolf’s hit revival of ‘Noises Off’

Director Anna D. Shapiro never laughed so hard in a rehearsal room as she did during preparations for Steppenwolf Theatre’s hit revival of “Noises Off.” At that time, the laughs were unintentional.

Last month, during a preview of Michael Frayn’s masterful backstage farce, the laughs came unexpectedly when one of the actors mistakenly struck another actor in the crotch during a bit of stage business. Fortunately, stage directions allowed the actor (who was uninjured, mostly) to sit down for a bit and recover.

“I was laughing so hard I couldn’t take notes,” admitted the Tony Award-winning director and former Steppenwolf artistic director, who for years has wanted to stage Frayn’s fiendishly challenging farce.

Unbeknownst to her, artistic directors Audrey Francis and Glenn Davis were also fans of the play.

“There’s something about the show that spoke to all three of us,” she says. “It’s an extraordinary example of true ensemble work.”

The play demands “superhuman communication” between the actors, explains 19-year ensemble member Shapiro, adding “developing the conditions and language for that kind of communication appealed to me.”

Relationships between the characters turn fractious during the broadly comic, extremely physical second act. But by the third act, those characters unite for a common goal.

“That’s Steppenwolf in a nutshell,” Shapiro says about the theater artists who are committed to delivering for their audience, regardless of what goes on offstage.

Challenging as any drama to produce, “Noises Off” requires mastery from everyone involved.

“The stage management team is working at a level never seen before,” she says. “The crew, the design team, everyone is operating at their highest level.”

That includes ensemble member Francis Guinan, who plays a perpetually tipsy actor named Selsdon Mowbray, who regularly misses his entrances.

“I may be the only person old enough to play Selsdon,” jokes the Elmhurst resident.

An ensemble member since 1978, Guinan had neither read nor seen Frayn’s farce-within-a-farce before he was cast.

“It turns out it’s an immensely dense, complicated, technical play,” he says. “It’s proven a real chore.”

It’s also great fun, he adds, for actors and audiences alike.

“I think people who come to see the show are going to find it’s the most fun they’ll have in the theater all year,” Guinan says.

Since its inception nearly 50 years ago, Steppenwolf has enjoyed a reputation as “rock ‘n’ roll” theater.

What that means is company members “were perfectly willing to take chances, perfectly willing to look silly, to just take the leap,” Guinan says.

“We’ve never been afraid of doing really silly things, and we’re doing them again now,” he says.

To Shapiro, “Noises Off” celebrates something only theater can do.

“It’s about a kind of analog joy” people don’t get from sitting at home watching TV, she says. “We need to remind ourselves, as theater makers, that there is something we have to offer … a combination of joy and expertise.”

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“Noises Off”

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 3 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and 3 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 3

Where: Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 1650 N. Halsted St., Chicago, (312) 335-1650, steppenwolf.org

Tickets: $20-$148