Theatre Tuscaloosa’s “Noises Off,” running — and leaping, tumbling and stumbling — in the Bean-Brown Theatre, is balletic in the sense that movements must be choreographed, moments coordinated so that the whole thing won’t fall apart. It’s comic in the sense that even if something did go horribly wrong, it’d be easy to mistake it for part of the script. Except there might be actual, instead of feigned, blood.

“Noises Off” is a play about a play, “nothing on,” a mediocre if not outright horrible farce, shown in three bits of its existence. the first act is a clumsy dress rehearsal when it seems nothing will indeed go on. the second act spins the entire two-story set around to show the audience there’s even wilder mayhem backstage, among the alcoholic, lovelorn and jealous cast, as it bumbles through a mid-run matinee performance. the third act turns the set back, and shows the play in its death throes, as all the betrayals, rivalries and misunderstandings threaten to implode onstage.

So this farce behind the farce is every producer or director’s nightmare, every actor’s worry — am I one, or all, of those divas, ditzes and dullards? — and, thanks to schadenfreude, an audience’s delight.

As the adage more-or-less goes: Tragedy is when I fall down; comedy is when you fall down. Many things succumb to gravity in “Noises Off,” including pants, sheets, axes, bottles, bottoms, dignity and more pants. Props should go to props, stage management and other Theatre Tuscaloosa crew just for keeping the blur of dresses, flowers, boxes, bags and so on in all their places.

Part of the fun of “Noises Off” is the insider thing: Playwright Michael Frayn was clearly mocking himself, as a writer of similar lame farces. the actors and crew of Theatre Tuscaloosa’s production might well know some of these types and traumas, from personal experience or observation. It’s tempting to ponder just who Gary Wise, playing “I am God” director Lloyd Dallas might have patterned his sometimes condescendingly patient, sometimes hairily explosive, usually cleverly manipulative moves on.

Certainly not from actual director Tina F. Turley, who has done a rather deity-like job herself of corraling this into balletic chaos. while even slapstick comedy can’t be purely mechanical — if you don’t somehow relate to or care for the characters, it’s as hollow as most Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey messes — there is so much of the physical required here that it’s a kind of miracle this thing not only works, but makes you miss the characters afterward.

As always with the ever-

present and ever-entertaining Wise, whatever and whomever he might have been inspired by, it becomes all his on stage. he is the spot-on leader for this motley band, just caring enough to get things done, but clearly very much his own egomaniac.

For “Noise Off” to cook, it must have a Dotty. Drew Baker plays the heart of the show, the veteran actress who’s invested her own money in this production of “nothing on,” hoping to have a hit and “set a little something aside” for her approaching retirement years. But Dotty is more saucy Helen Mirren than dignified Judi Dench; it’s her affair with younger actor Garry (Will Nevin) that sparks much friction in the second and third acts. Baker has the great deceptive quality of projecting maternal warmth, concealing a sharper, darker wit that breaks out in the latter acts, the knife within the velvet sheath.

Charles Prosser earns much of the love and many of the biggest belly-laughs with his dim-witted Frederick, who is so mercifully free of the ravages of intelligence that he really, really can’t see the director is about to strangle him for continuing to seek motivation at midnight, or that sweet Belinda (Brooke Wood) wants to jump his bones.

Not as experienced in years, but warmly welcome back to Tuscaloosa after 15 years working in Los Angeles and new York, is Wood, who invests vigorous life into what can be an overlooked part, as less-neurotic Belinda seemingly loves and gets along with everyone. although the enabler of the group, she happily gets to let go in a scene or two, providing some of that Baker-esque twist, from darling to monster in a flash, and then back to form.

Wescott Youngson also plays dotty, lower-case, as senior actor Selsdon, bowling over his drunken goon’s role with charm and fervor. Molly Page embodies the vapid Brooke with helium and butterflies and a dose of lust; what’s most remarkable and perhaps not as noticed by the opening-night audience, in the rush of gags in the third act, is how Brooke keeps going like the Energizer bunny-tank, completely oblivious of how the show’s falling apart.

Elliot Moon, as go-to flunky Tim, and Susie Johnson, as stage manager Poppy, have fewer moments, but shine in the backstage second act, running ragged and finding musical changes in the most mundane of stage announcements. Nevin has another of those thankless parts, as Garry who must mostly register concern. while he needs a few more years perhaps to rise up to the flexible embodiment of some of his fellow actors, he has some fine bits, including the axe shtick which turns into a Harlem Globetrotters-style circus act, capped perfectly by Moon’s finest and fastest move of the night, one of those coordinations of comic timing that make a highly mechanical, but not heartless, show such as “Noises Off” shine.

REVIEW: Comedy corrals laughs from chaos, on and off stage