A group of mediocre touring actors is tasked with presenting a cheeky little sex farce titled Nothing On. Everything goes wrong, except for the things that are supposed to go wrong. With a plot featuring errant plates of sardines, misplaced clothing, and an Arab sheik, Nothing On is the most absurd and poorly acted play one could ever hope to see.
The actors who stumble into view are undoubtedly a motley crew. The leading lady, portrayed as a cheerful housemaid, is Dotty (Sarah Lucht), a washed-up television comedienne who loses track of those sardines. Her fellow performers vary from Selsdon (Grant Byington), a stubborn drunk who continually misses cues, to Brooke (Bonnie Auguston), a perpetually vacant ingenue who often misplaces her contact lenses mid-sentence. Guiding them all is Lloyd (Tom Mounsey), a confused director who interrupts the performance to inform his company that “doors and sardines” represent what farce, theatre, and life “are all about.”
The entourage also includes Garry (Tom Walton), a frazzled leading man; Freddy (Mark Schwahn), the unstable second player who loses his wife, sanity, and pants; Belinda (Melissa Whitney), a gossipy yet sweet actress trying to hold the show together; and two dim-witted backstage workers, Tim and Poppy (Andy Baldwin and Ariel Puls).
When we first meet our band of unhappy players, they are cheerfully rehearsing the first act of Nothing On, which loosely involves a young real estate agent taking a pretty secretary to the country home of a couple supposedly hiding in Spain from the income tax collectors. It is a midnight dress rehearsal, and they are set to open the tour the next day in a country town grandly named Weston-super-Mare. With only a few rehearsals behind them, everything goes awry — from misplaced lines to misplaced sardines.
In the course of the play, we watch the Nothing On company repeat the same first act again and again in different towns, tearing the scenery, the dialogue, and each other apart. By the time Nothing On gets to its final engagement at Stockton-on-Tees, nerves, scenery, and love affairs are in tatters.
WHEN: Thu/Fri/Sat 7:30pm & Sat/Sun 2:00pm until 4/6/25
TICKETS: Adults = $42.00 / Seniors= $40.00 / Students = $30.00
