I don’t quite know what my editor thinks of my theatrical preferences, or if she just has me down as lonely, but she keeps sending me to plays where actors end up in their pants. This time, however, I am content to let it slide. Last night's production of Michael Fayn’s comedy must be one of CUADC’s most ambitious. Noises Off - described in no uncertain terms by The New York Times as ‘the funniest farce ever written’ - dominates the ADC’s mainshow slot for a whole fortnight, has already sold out the rest of this week, and not without reason.

Noises Off follows the cast and crew of Nothing On as they plough through final preparations and two ‘real’ performances by any means necessary, with tensions building all the while both on and behind the stage, and the audience privy to all. Note that the conceptual challenges of its play-within-a-play-ness have already begun to take their toll on the number of inverted commas demanded by their explanation. In the first act, Lloyd Dallas (Ben Kavanagh) ‘directs’ the dress rehearsal from somewhere around row J of the ADC auditorium itself. His array of roll-neck jumpers and general manner make his performance as the cliché of a director worryingly convincing. His positioning works brilliantly, because the audience is placed directly in the middle of the misunderstandings that are the source of so much of the humour, so that comic distance between these two poles of comprehension are apparent to none more so than ourselves.

Once Mrs Clackett (Katherine Jack) decides which part of Yorkshire her accent is from, she and her ever-elusive sardines provide a constant source of amusement. She is quickly joined by Roger (Jason Forbes), one of the first actors I have seen make a comic catchphrase out of unfinished sentences so successfully. Will Attenborough also stands out as Selsden Mowbray, who in turn plays an aging burglar harbouring a tender nostalgia for his bank-robbing days. He romanticises ‘the smell of the theatre’ with a creepy dignity, and is never uncomfortable in the movements or dialogue of his elderly role.

The true success of this production is collaborative. The whole cast push the seven doors and two storeys of the domestic set to their limits in a masterclass in comic timing. Through a sequence of carefully choreographed misunderstandings, exits and entrances, the confusion escalates, and the hilarity is compounded without relent.

In the second act, we see Nothing On once more, this time from a backstage vantage-point. The whole set is reversed and its action becomes visible only through its two windows, this time performed to an assumed audience, whilst the ‘off-stage’ characters perform for us almost entirely in whispers which are muted in everything but their energy. With this second theatrical dimension added, the collaborative dynamic becomes even more impressive: the watching audience focuses their attention on one of the simultaneous exchanges, only to find that when they return to a previous one it has become all the more absurd, with flowers, whisky, and a fireman’s axe all circulating in various permutations.

The worse Nothing On becomes for its cast, the better Noises Off becomes for its audience. My only criticism is that, at around two and a half hours long, it does at times feel a little long. This farce is almost as exhausting to watch as it must be to perform. Nevertheless, Noises Off is not unrealistic in its grand designs; heartwarming silliness at its best.