"Noises Off," Frayn's efforts to write both an onstage and a backstage farce, took Broadway by storm in 1984. In 1992 "Noises Off," starring Carol Burnett and Michael Caine, hit the big screen with a bit of a thud. Farce of the "Noises Off" variety doesn't transfer with ease to film.

Friday night (5/7/99) "Noises Off" opened in Reno as the next-to-last show in the Bruka Theatre Company's current season. Bruka's "Noises Off," while not yet as fine-tuned a farce as it probably will be a week after opening night, had enough dash, crash, giggles and belly laughs to more than make up for the production's few dented moments of erratic timing.

At its best, "Noises Off" is a wild and diverting combination of onstage acrobatics, backstage infighting, and feversh bitchiness, both onstage and off. Bruka's "Noises Off" comes within a hairs-breadth of compacting its components into a swift (15 minutes less would have done the trick) nearly three-hour evening of ribald, outrageous, funny theater.

For the uninitiated, "Noises Off" is a farce within a farce about a fifth-rate theatrical company limping its way to Broadway in an absurdly silly English sex farce called "Nothing On."

"Nothing On" is about two couples, each of which thinks a certain English country house is empty and available for clandestine lovemaking. Doors open and close, there's a young lady cavorting about in her undies, two of the actors are engaged in on-going backstage hostilities, the play's male director is entangled in romance with its female stage manager, and an old character actor on board for a comeback is deaf, and - if he can manage it - drunk. Add to that mix a shrill-shrieking housekeeper who can keep track of neither lines nor action, and you have "Noises Off" in a nut shell.

Dave Anderson and Scott Beers are the show's co-directors, which helps nudge the play into being even more schizophrenic than normal - the best of directions for such a play to go. The production's nicely spun out intricate action is adroitly knitted up and the audience laughs a lot - not a bad thing for an audience to do.

The beleagured director of the troupe is broadly played (every role in this show is broadly played) by Androo Allen with understandable take-this-job-and-shove-it gobs of out-of-control frustration. As the ditzy housekeeper, Kathy Welch slips expertly in and out of her character's double lives with the deft air of a seasoned player who's seen better days. Matt Lewandowski and Erin Anderson are nervously eager as the younger pair of would-be lovers in the inside play, with Lewandowski's over-the-edge reactions to backstage indignities a continuous source of delight.

The slightly older pair of well-heeled wannabe lovers are an edgy husband-and-wife combination returned to England from overseas who are fearful of being found out by the tax collector. As the wife, Catherine T. Boles is properly hectic in an English kind of way and a deft foil for her husband's tax woes. As the husband, rubber-faced Michael Grimm reflects every horrific emotion in a series of ridiculous episodes that reduce the poor man to battle scars and tears and onlookers to howls of laughter.

In the cleverly written and acted roles of stage manager and company general aide, Angela Anderson and Scott Dundas dash in and out to wonderfully comedic affect. And last, but certainly not least and absolutely best of all, is the incredibly quick, limber and fabulous David Richards. As the old ham playing an unwitting burglar breaking into what he thinks is an empty house, Richards is never anything less than hilarious.

The set is as much a character in "Noises Off" as are its flesh and blood players. A great big kudo to the set and the hefty chaps who get their kicks turning the whole thing inside out.

"Noises Off" plays Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through May 22, at the Bruka Theatre of the Sierra, 99 North Virginia Street, Reno. For information call 775 323 3221.