Noises Off

A motif throughout the play is malfunction. Malfunctions of wardrobe, of props, of people even. Sometimes the malfunctions are planned, meaning they were used as sabotage (the cactus-butt problem, shoes tied together). Other malfunctions were completely accidental, but all of them reflect the craziness of the cast in general. The show that they are trying to put on is extremely complicated and the cast is too crazy and caught in their own world to do it. Then there's the malfunctions in the personal lives of all of them, jealousy, love triangles, alcoholism. The fact that Poppy is pregnant and Lloyd is the father while Lloyd really doesn't care about Poppy at all. All the characters are like chickens running around with their heads cut off or, you could say, robots malfunctioning.(mwahha bringing it full circle) 

Choosing a tagline, is hard because at first I wanted to do something with the sardines, because that’s my favorite part about this play is how complicated everything is with the damn sardines. But it’s kind of hard to encapsulate the play with a line about sardines, so the perfect solution is to choose a line that was supposed to be about sardines, but because of the craziness got turned into something else. The perfect tagline for this farce is the final line of the play, "When all around is strife and uncertainty, there's nothing like..a good old-fashioned..plate of curtain!"