By SHARON EBERSON

“Dying is easy, comedy is hard,” is the death-bed quote often attributed to the actor Edmund Gwenn, with many variants and stories about its origins that reshaped the words through the years. 

Noises Off, a backstage farce amid a play within a play, has been the gold standard of theater comedies since the work was first produced in 1983. For Pittsburgh Public Theater, the current production is the second time around for the Michael Frayn comedy; it was last produced at the O’Reilly Theater in 2014. 

onStage Pittsburgh presented Pittsburgh Public several cast members with questions about playing comedy, followed by their answers.

1. Getting into character(s), for a play within a play: Please describe one trait that helps you embody your character(s), for example, an accent or attitude.
2. Noises Off has been called “the funniest farce ever written.” Is your approach to comedy different from your approach to a dramatic role? How? 
3. Slapstick is so hard to pull off live. What’s it been like rehearsing the timing that is so crucial to both safety and getting big laughs?
4. Do you have a favorite moment in Noises Off that isn’t a spoiler?
5. Thinking of the backstage chaos that spills onto the stage, do you have a memorable story you can share about something funny or wild that happened during a show?

LARA HAYHURST (Brooke Ashton): Last seen at the Public in Company (2014), recent Pittsburgh appearances include POTUS (City Theatre) and Who’s Holiday! (Pittsburgh CLO). She has Broadway, off-Broadway, national tour and numerous regional credits, including 15 productions of Legally Blonde.

1. Getting into character: The world moves a little too fast for poor Brooke, and she’s doing her best to keep up. Everything’s a little fuzzy (visually and mentally), so I try to relax my jaw, slow my brain, and imagine a warm halo of light around everything I see (or can’t see). At the end of the day, Brooke is just happy to be there — a sentiment we both share.

2. Approach to comedy: Comedy, especially farce, is math. I think that’s why musical theater performers so easily translate into this kind of performance, because it’s all about beats and counts; specificity and clear, sharp movements that may as well be choreography. It’s a very specific style that requires heightened body language, intense listening skills, and the ability to alternately hold still and explode with movement. Stretching and body preparation are a huge part of the prep process in a show like this for me, especially one with so much running, climbing, stopping, jumping, and falling (in heels nonetheless!).

3. Slapstick: We rehearse everything methodically and mathematically, using percentages to mark our speed and intensity. We’ll do sections at 50%, then 70%, then show speed. Show speed is never “100%” because you always have to factor in the adrenaline that comes into play when in front of a live audience — so if you think you’re at 90%, you’re actually at 100. We are also indebted to Jose (Perez IV), our incredible fight director, who keeps us safe and helps us break down the uber-physical moments of the show. We’ll run those like a dance before every performance to ensure safety and clarity.

4. Favorite show moment: There’s a moment in the second act where I get painfully intimate with a window and couch that I can’t wait for folks to see.

5. Memorable moment: I’ve had my fair share of wardrobe mishaps that required hilarious efforts to mask — most memorably playing Elle in a production of Legally Blonde where my Playboy bunny suit zipper popped all the way down and open. I was on a thrust stage and there was NO hiding the fact that I wasn’t wearing tights or a bra (all those quick changes!). I’m also a bit mischievous and have a bad habit of playing little jokes onstage that have occasionally gotten me into trouble — writing notes, wearing fake mustaches, antics in the wings. Luckily there’s NO time for that in this show, so my castmates are safe. Or so they think.

LINDA MUGLESTON (Dotty Otley): A Broadway veteran, her credits include The Music Man, My Fair Lady, Hello, Dolly!, Beautiful, Cinderella, Anything Goes, Into the Woods, and Young Frankenstein.

1.  Getting into character: One thing that grounds me into my characters is posture and dialect. Mrs. Clackett is more hunched over, worn and has a cockney accent. Dotty is upright in posture and has a very refined RP [associated with the British upper class] accent. 

2.  Approach to comedy: My approach to farce isn’t different than in a drama. The characters in a farce must be grounded and real, trying desperately to solve the problem at hand, just like in a drama. Perhaps the difference is an attention to timing, rhythm, precision and style. 

3.  Slapstick: We have an incredible director (Margot Bordelon) and fight director (Jose Perez IV), who have brilliantly streamlined and distilled the moments to facilitate clean storytelling. 

4. Favorite moment: Well, I have several! I love listening to the rhythm of the show … the language. And of course, I love seeing fish flying through the air! 

5. Memorable moment: I’ve had several funny moments happen on stage. One that comes to mind was during the run of Kiss Me Kate. At the end of the Act 1, Kate would kick a prop bird in my direction. The bird would invariably hurl towards my face, so I decided I needed a blocking move in the choreography to stop the bird from smacking me in the face. But one time the bird evaded my block and ricocheted into my wig. It’s legs got stuck in my wig, and it just dangled there. I didn’t yank the bird off because I didn’t want to damage the wig, so I played the scene with the bird dangling off my wig. The scene is chaotic, so it kind of worked? Live theater! 

RICARDO VILA-ROGER (Frederick Fellowes): Credits include Indecent and Murder on the Orient Express at Pittsburgh Public and Peribañez at Quantum Theatre. Vila-Roger is head of performance in the Theatre Arts Department at the University of Pittsburgh.

1.  Getting into character: Frederick (Fellowes) is very down on himself and often talks about how “stupid” he is. Part of this character is finding a balance between his low self-esteem and his desire to do the best job possible in this play in which he was cast. Finding his innocence and desire to please have been a big part of the discovery process for me.

2.  Approach to comedy: The approach to this has to be different because comedy is about timing and farce has a specific style. I typically approach dramatic roles by finding the correlation between the internal life and physical life of the character and discovering how they inform each other. This type of work is more technical. The physicality of this show demands precision of action and economy of gesture so the approach is about finding the physicality and then seeing how it affects the inner life.

3.  Slapstick: Two words – joyful and exhausting. It’s extremely fun to do AND it requires a huge amount of energy and concentration. I’m sleeping really well right now.

4.  Favorite moment: My favorite moment changes with each rehearsal. It’s currently my tug-of-war with Brooke … that’s all I can say about that.

5.  Memorable moment: My story actually happened the last time I was on the O’Reilly stage. During a matinee of Murder on the Orient Express, the turntable stopped working just as we were going into the final scene of the show, when the murderer is revealed. The set had many levels and the final scene had very tight lighting cues based on what parts of the stage were being used. The cast all worked together to shift all of the staging (up and down many stairs) so that we were all still in the light and still telling the story clearly. The whole time we were trying to make it invisible to the audience. It was a moment of true teamwork that strengthened our cast bond. It was a simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating experience that I hope to never repeat. 

MATT HENDERSON (Tim Allgood): A Pittsburgh-based actor making his Public Theater debut, Henderson’s recent credits include The Trial (Richard E. Rauh Studio Theatre), Witch (Carnegie Stage), Andy Warhol’s Tomato (PICT), Angels in America Part I: Millennium Approaches (Elsewhere Theatre Company), and Witness for the  Prosecution (Prime Stage Theatre). 

1.  Getting into character: Tim is desperately trying to keep this show together and avoid disaster at every moment, so his body is in a state of constant vigilance, even when he’s been awake for 48 hours building the set.

 2.  Approach to comedy: I think in comedy the emotions sometimes run deeper and are even rawer than they are in drama. In a show like that this that reaches such operatic heights of absurdity, you just need to have full-body commitment to the circumstances of every scene. 

3: Slapstick: Physical comedy is really a dance, so it’s about slowly building everything moment to moment, understanding the emotional logic that connects the actions, and being alive inside a very specific rhythm. It’s a bit laborious at first, but once you’ve gotten it in your body, it’s so much fun. 

4. Favorite moment:  Act 3 in its entirety is pretty glorious. So many props, costumes, and people in places where they shouldn’t be. So much sound and fury, signifying nothing. 

5. Memorable moment: When I was a kid, I played Humpty Dumpty in a production of Alice in Wonderland. Alice forgot her lines in the middle of our scene, and she just kind of took off, leaving me up on a wall by myself. I don’t remember how I got down. There definitely wasn’t a great fall. I think I just kind of quietly shuffled off in one piece.

TICKETS AND DETAILS

Pittsburgh Public Theater’s production of Noises Off is at the O’Reilly Theater, Downtown, October 1-19, 2025. Tickets: Visit https://ppt.org/production/100487/noises-off. 

Categories: Feature Stories, Our Posts, Show Previews

Tags: 5 questions, Lara Hayhurst, Linda Mugleston, Matt Henderson, Noises Off, Ricardo Vila-Roger