Plays 1: Alphabetical Order / Donkeys' Years / Clouds / Make and Break / Noises Off

by Michael Frayn

"One of theatre's subtlest, most sophisticated minds" (The Times)

Alphabetical Order: "A comic essay about two types of woman… a very intelligent comedy because of its classic simplicity, and unusual in the way that the two types of women do not become stereotypes" (Daily Telegraph); Donkeys' Years, a satire on the establishment and British Institutions "Gorgeous farce, all the funnier for emerging from credible aspirations and natural anxieties… the play is richer and cannier than we expect farces to be." (New Statesman); Clouds, is a satire on government sponsored trips and a portrait of sexual jealousy,"it is poignantly and unerringly funny" (Guardian); Make and Break is a satirical commentary on British corporate interests abroad "Full of pain, ruthless observation, and a sense of humour which is sardonic, lunatic and warm" (Sunday Times); Noises Off - the West End hit play about a company of actors stepping from a sex farce into their own nightmarish lives backstage "A very intelligent joke about the fragility of all forms of drama…a pulverisingly funny play." (Guardian)

"All of these plays are attempts to show something of the world, not to change it or to promote any particular idea of it. That's not to say there are no ideas in them. In fact what they are all about in one way or another is the way in which we impose our ideas upon the world around us…it might be objected that one single theme is a somewhat sparse provision to sustain five separate and dissimilar plays. I can only say that it is a theme which has occupied philosophers for over two thousand years and one which is likely to occupy them for at least two thousand more…"(Michael Frayn)

Genres: Plays, Fiction

556 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1985

About the author

Michael Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy. His novels, such as Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong and Spies, have also been critical and commercial successes, making him one of the handful of writers in the English language to succeed in both drama and prose fiction. His works often raise philosophical questions in a humorous context. Frayn's wife is Claire Tomalin, the biographer and literary journalist.

Reviews

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those who have been watching my feed know that I have been struggling with the wildly inconsistent quality of Michael Frayn's work, which ranges from jaw-droppingly mediocre to -- well, at least in this volume -- putative genius. "Noises Off" is likely the best thing that Frayn will ever write. And we learn from the introduction that its methodical and brilliant presentation of a play within a play is the result of Frayn rewriting it for every new theatrical run. This leads me to believe that Frayn is something of a fraud and that the great theatrical geniuses who have STAGED this play are more vital collaborators than even I knew. Of the remaining plays, "Alphabetical Order" is an enjoyable philosophical riff on contradiction, "Donkeys' Years" is a ponderous attempt to fuse the bedhopping farce with political intrigue, "Clouds" is pretentious colonialism, and "Make and Break" is as forgettable as some dudebro you remember in your undergraduate days blowing wind up your ass with "philosophy." "Noises Off" is the obvious work of genius here. And were this play not contained in this collection, my Goodreads rating would be considerably lower. My journey into Frayn's work has significantly reduced any vague respect I had for him.

[Charlie Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Noises Off is a wonderful, hilarious farce. The rest of the plays are dull and certainly not worth reading. 4 stars for Noises Off and 1 star for every other play in the collection, of which there were too many.

[John Jr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few simple remarks in lieu of a full review.

Because I'm thinking of writing one, my main interest in reading this volume was to see how Michael Frayn handled farces, of which there are two here. Maybe that predisposed me against the others; in any case, though the remaining three are pretty clearly comic, they didn't work on the page nearly as well. Alphabetical Order is a neat dissection of two broad approaches to handling the world, as illustrated by the workings of the library (known to some in the States as the morgue) of a provincial newspaper under two different hands. Clouds seems to me nearly as evanescent as the object of its title; it presents two Brits and a Yank exploring, and apparently failing really to see, 70s-era Cuba. And Make and Break shows us the vicissitudes of a British manufacturing team trying to make something happen--mostly of a business nature--at a German trade show. Its main character, a man who's more compulsive than genuinely driven, is a fascinating case, I admit.

Probably all three have more appeal on the stage--where I gather they succeeded, though I didn't check many reviews--or even if read with a more active imagination than I seem to have marshaled. What's surprising is that the farces almost immediately took off and played themselves out in the theater of my mind, despite having a larger and more complex cast of characters than any of the other plays.

Donkeys' Years relies on a classic situation, the college reunion, which in this case involves an unnamed men's college, 20 years after everyone was last here together. There's a woman in the mix, whom everyone used to be hot for, and therefore still is, though she's now the college master's wife. There's also a good range of classes and types (including the man no one remembers). And, beyond the farcical developments (people and clothes ending up where they shouldn't be), which as always take some time to set up, there are other kinds of comedy. If I had Bill Gates's billions--which even Bill Gates doesn't have anymore, having put most of it into his goody-goody foundation--I'd subsidize a production of this play just so I could see it on a stage. (I know a good stage comedy wouldn't help the sufferers of malaria much, but it'd make me feel better about them.) Otherwise, it's hard to imagine it being done in the States: "too foreign," I suppose.

Noises Off, on the other hand, has been done in the States, but I've never managed to see it and wondered whether the raves I had heard could possibly be correct. They are: this is one of the great comedies. And if anything has ever deserved to be called ingenious, it's this. A troupe of players, not the best of their breed, is setting out to perform a sex farce that's a little beyond them; we see it as well as everything that happens backstage, thanks to a perspective change between the acts. Among other things, this is a comedy about how hard it is to do comedies well (I hope you've all heard Edmund Gwenn's supposed dying line), and when it is done well, it must be a marvel. More broadly, it's about how easily things go wrong. To say any more about it seems either unnecessary or sacrilegious.