Have you ever seen the stage play, "Noises Off?" It's a fast-paced farce where all sorts of misunderstandings occur because people enter the room at awkward and unpredictable times and frequently leave by the wrong door. People are always frantically looking for someone who's on the balcony right above their heads, or who's just disappeared behind another door. It's a play where the set design is crucial.
I've seen the story three times, both on stage and on film, and every time I see it I leave wondering if a real room in a real house could be built like that, a room made with the deliberate intention of provoking comic misunderstandings.
When you think about it, it's an interesting set (above). There are three doors on the bottom floor and four on the mezzanine, plenty of opportunity for confusion. Plenty of opportunity too, for the percussive sounds of slamming doors and thumping staircase runs. The set is electric with potential. Why can't a real living room be like that?
In the set design above (all these pictures are from different productions of the same play) the shower room is given it's own level, which is a great idea. That means people on the bedroom level attempting to take a shower have to walk along the ramp and down the stairs in a big old hangdog robe and carrying a brush on a stick...which strikes me as funny. If they forget something they have to do it all over again, calling attention to themselves when they'd rather be stealthy. It creates tension on the stage and would probably do the same in real life.
Some people (above) are bound to make a mad dash for the shower room in their underwear.
The sofa (above) has its back to the window and doors, a placement with lots of potential for surprise and gags. If you were sitting on the sofa you might have no idea that someone had just come in behind you, and don't even think about necking in private.
Of course if this were a real house the owner wouldn't be inconvenienced. He'd be sitting on a second sofa in the foreground facing the window, watching everybody else's confusion. This idea is too good to use only on the stage, or the Jerry Springer show. Let's see real living rooms designed like this.
18 comments:
I can just imagine the situations you mentioned, pretty funny. I love the movie version of Noises Off it makes me laugh out loud every time I watch it, but I have to admit i've never seen the stage version, I imagine it's more fun because the energy of the actors and the audiance response adds a lot to the experience
LET THERE BE CONFUSION!
Remember the old AVENGERS (Steed & Peel, not Iron Man et al) episode "The House That Jack Built"? Emma Peel was trapped in a house with rotating rooms so she could never find her way out.
I'm sure the fire marshals would have apoplexy, but a 3D maze where one had to go up and down stairs as well as through corridors would be fun. (I wonder if it's possible to do a 4D maze -- might be a sci-fi story in that.)
Apropros influences on modern architecture, I think Legos have done more to influence architecture than anything since Frank Lloyd Wright. Seriously. Do you think there's any working architect who didn't get their start by playing with Legos as a kid? I wonder if we're gonna see architecture based on Sim City games in the future.
Frank Lloyd Wright actually got his start with his own generations version of legos, the Froebel Gifts. You can still buy these online.
I often find myself imagining what that fourth wall looks like, whether the actors chose to break it or not, in comparison to what a real room may be like.
Those Noises Off rooms if real would have had to had long entrance halls to actual rooms further back. It isn't too far removed from Laugh Ins wall of doors.
Then there were the four stories of cutaway rooms of Jerry Lewis' The Ladies Man. Hmm, I don't remember this gag.
http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/ladies-man-4-714633.jpg
There are also those sets where square corners are suggested, but the entire thing is actually laid out on a curve for camera and live audience. Try to think of where Jerry Seinfelds computer nook might actually be in relation to the bike bathroom bedroom and the window to the outside.
If your mind bends that way, what if that set were an actual house or home, how would it be laid out, Mark Bennett tried his best 12 years back or so. I wouldn't always agree, but he did more research generally, although I do remember the times when the castaways tried to map their own Gilligans Island..
TV Sets: Fantasy Blueprints of Classic TV Homes
by Mark Bennett
ISBN-13: 9781575000176
Sorry to be longwinded. I think about this a lot. I'm laying out my house in Google Sketchup now. Its funny to discover the odd unused spaces you might miss if you were doing a quick mental inventory of the rooms (Chimneys, closet, spaces above stairs that have a tilted ceiling, hey I could have a secret closet there! Stairs often have a closet of some sort over the landing space.
Hey Eddie!
I ran away from a brief interlude with the animation industry just over a decade ago and found work on live action sets as a scenic. Way back in 2001 I happened to do some work for the Broadway production of Noises Off with Peter Gallagher.
4t4: Both versions were good in different ways. I actually liked the film better.
Buzz: That episode is on YouTube! Thanks for the tip. I'll watch it tomorrow. A while back there was a horror film that had a house set with constantly moving walls. The set design stole the show
Hans: The Froebel blocks! I have a collection of those! I got them for my kids and when they got too old I played with them myself.
I'll look up the Bennet book and check out the link tomorrow. I'm so sleepy I can hardly keep my eyes open.
Are you going to build a house of your own design? Take 6 months to scope out room designs that already work in the real world. Ask around to see who holds parties that are really popular. Usually the good parties are held in houses that have some magnetic quality. Find out which rooms attract the most people and measure them.
K. Nacht: Haw! You actually worked on this play! I wonder if Maurice Noble ever worked on set design.
If'n he did, they woulda been swell, no doubt!
that a Hirschfeldt poster?
Visionary architect Buckminster Fuller also designed a set of marionettes:
http://flexitoon.blogspot.com/2010/01/bucky-baird.html
More that I am measuring my own house for renovation than thinking of a new one. When I realistically think of designing my dream house these days, for cost purposes, I tend towards a minimal foot print, just the least that I might need, bed bath feed, partially for affordability,partially to force myself to escape the possibility of attracting clutter; there is not only my own clutter, but those of other family homes that have been vacated that have centrall relocated into the houses of the living, I'm sort of in Collier Brothers hell at the moment.
Beyond the small footprint, I just want to make sure it is green, well insulated and plenty of electricity and other convenience factors. Of course, I used to go hog wild with imaginings. - Studios and Libraries always have been important elements, some of these double up as social rooms, like a music or band room. I also tend to think modular, if I were building for a growing family, I might make sure that each bedroom had its own bathroom. I also have odd concepts like the all aluminum flushable batchelor pad, or at least, floors that robots can attend to, hard foors or industrial carpet for Roombas, wet rooms (Kitch bath, with drains) This is built on the idea of elimating that which I know from experience may become too much for me, keeping a clean presentable house. Before years of actual housekeeping wore me down, II used to toss in odd ideas like a second floor swimming pool, which was glass sided on the first floor, so diners could watch people swim. But if I see a place on TV, especially older sit come set dressing ideas, I always remark about how tidy it seems, I wouldn't mind living in any of them.
What about a second house for socializing? If the party left a mess, you might not have to attend to it right away, and it wouldn't get messy with everyday living between get togethers?
How many real homes would have an exterior window (on the ground floor)occupying the same space as several interrior doors. The outside of the house would have a long corodor leading to a window that would provide no light at all.
The set is built to be functional,however, and the widow is crucial to the show.
On stage, the set is really the unbilled star of the production, since in act one we view the show from the theatre during rehersal, in the second act, the entire set turns around and the audience sees the show from "backstage",and then in the third act the set is back in place again and we see the show at the end of its run.
I've designed a few sets in the past, and my wife really wants to direct this show. I keep trying to talk her out of it. It may look like a light breezy lark, but the show is a technical nightmare that requires a hell of a lot of work to make it look easy.
The set is electric with potential. Why can't a real living room be like that?
...could it be because people don't want to be embarrassed, compromised and on show while they go to & from the bathroom & bedroom in real life?
Be amazing if you could somehow recreate the hallway gag of people impossibly entering and leaving opposite doors onstage. Maybe identical twin actors.
I forgot to add: the long, low style of home popular in the 50s onward is ideal for people to view as if theatergoers looking at a stage set when the typically placed living room picture window is lit up at night.
And every Christmas, whatever the style of house, I love how people "present" their great rooms and trees for public view. It's charming and very, very theatrical. A post on those alone would be great to see--too late now, I guess, the holidays being past(although to my delight there are a few holdouts I saw just last night driving home who still have up & turned on their Xmas lights, which was beautiful).
Hey Eddie!
I was just in my school's recent production of Noises Off as Lloyd. This post made me really happy to read, because I had thought many of the same things myself while going through rehearsals. It's perfectly crafted comedy, and all the pieces just fit so well. I'd say it's even designed for improv and accidents, because we had no performance without an unscripted event! Set problems and prop conditions just heightened the madness. I really hope I did the writing some justice in my performance. Even afterward I kept thinking of all the gags I could plus!
I've got to say I didn't care for the movie version though. It seemed like all the actors had worked on lines separately and just been thrown together. The happy ending seemed a bit too Hollywood as well. The nature of the play is that things get worse and worse until they just reach a peak and end. Resolution is too calming and, to me, seems to mess with that premise. So much of it is just seems written for the stage, with an audience to play to. But then again, I'm a little biased!
Anyway, another great post as always=) It'd be fantastic if we could live in a funny houses like that.
Anon: Yep, Hirschfeldt!
Craig: Fascinating! I can imagine it because I had a morphing triangle toy and it lent itself to lots of different shapes.
Hans: I know what you mean. I wonder how neat people manage to do it?
It sounds like you have a big job ahead of you, even if you're not starting from scratch. I did a big, enclosed back porch add-on to my house where I asked for a combination of the intimate, low ceiling, beamed ceiling and thick timber look of Gheppeto's workshop in "Pinnochio", combined with the slanted walls of the house in "Forbidden Planet." I took the contractor to see a house where the porch enclosed a really interesting space, and we did a lot of measuring. I was really pleased with the result, but was full of anxiety when it was going up.
John A: True, the set is unrealistic. I meant to mention that and I forgot. Oddly enough, that fact doesn't seem to get in the way of anyone's enjoyment of the play.
I'll bet the show is a technical nightmare, and the stress would just about kill your wife, but maybe every directer needs to tackle something monstrously difficult in order to grow.
BTW: Ron Corwin's comment says the play is amazingly tolerant of mistakes.
Anon: Ah, the classic hallway gag! It would really be a feat to make that possible in real life!
Jenny: Haw! True, the way I described it, it would be a real burden on the guests. A real-life funny house would have to be fun for the guests as well as the owner.
I'll digress to wonder out loud if anyone's ever written a book analyzing how rooms that impress everyone for their exceptionally good vibes manage to get that way. I'd need to see lots of photographs, and measurements.
I like what you said about open windows at Christmas time.
Ron: Interesting comments. Maybe John A would find what you said comforting. I'll try to get the movie from Netflix and see if I still feel the same way about it.
I didn't mean to totally dismiss the technicalities. JohnA IS right... it's insane! There are a lot of props... just remembering which thing goes where and at what time really takes a lot out of you. The timing is very strict and the pace has to be kept at all times. However, if everyone in the cast knows what is supposed to be done and plays along with accidents it's still hilarious. It's tolerant if a mistake happens, but you have to be professional and keep moving.
A "perfect" performance of this play almost seems impossible. I imagine Michael Frayn chuckles to himself even now as everyone tries. It truly is a humbling affair, as some seasoned professionals can't even get it right. But no matter what, it's a really fun and funny show! Keep the characters and energy strong and the audience will have a blast.
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