<DIV><P>In <I>Noises Off </I>Michael Frayn creates an ingenious play-within-a-play farce. The on-stage play is a dreadful bedroom farce called <I>Noises On </I>in which scantily clad young ladies are being chased in and out of continually opening and slamming doors by old men. The backstage farce develops during the play's final rehearsal and tour as the characters make their exits from <I>Noises On </I>only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare going on backstage and then have to go back again on stage to <I>Noises On</I>. In the end the two farces can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into one single collective nervous breakdown.</P></DIV>