GUILDERLAND — Michael Frayn is said to have stood in the wings, watching Lynn Redgrave in Chinamen, a comedy he had written, and thought it was funnier behind than in front.

He decided to write a farce from behind the scenes: Noises Off takes its name from the theatrical term for off-stage sounds. They inform the on-stage action in this play within a play.

Written 32 years ago, Noises Off first came to the Guilderland stage seven years ago. It’s a favorite of English teacher and long-time director Andy Maycock who calls it “a riot.”

The play involves both slapstick — like pratfalls on stairs — and word plays.

“I like comedies better than dramas. We get a bigger audience,” Maycock said. “On a Friday or Saturday night, more people want to laugh than be emotionally drained.”

His only regret about the Guilderland production seven years ago is that, in that era, fall plays ran for just two performances. Now there are three — on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.

Historically, the fall plays are not as well attended as the spring musicals, with just “a few hundred” to appreciate “what the kids have worked so hard on,” said Maycock.

In recent years, there has been a drop-off in students auditioning for parts, Maycock said. “If we get more students coming to see the play,” he said, they may recognize classmates on stage. This may lead would-be thespians to surmise, “I know that guy…Maybe normal people can do that,” said Maycock.

Nine of the 25 or so students who auditioned for Noises Off got parts, said Maycock, and each is working on some form of a British accent. Noises Off portrays a third-rate British troupe on the road, performing a play called Nothing On, with an intentional double entendre in its title.

“Noises Off is a play about a bunch of British actors who are panicked their play will be a disaster,” said Maycock, summarizing the plot. “They never get it right. The audience is in on the joke.”

The first act is the troupe’s final dress rehearsal, where there are troubles with the props, with the exits and entrances, with missed lines, and with missed cues. The second act is set backstage as the troupe is on tour. And the third act depicts a performance near the end of the run.

“People will laugh until it hurts,” said Maycock.

Maksim Papenkov, a Guilderland senior, plays the director, with an Irish accent, “which stands out,” said Maycock. “He’s a bundle of energy. His brain goes a mile a minute and his mouth twice as fast.”

Ashley Visker plays Dottie. “She’s the housekeeper and the glue that keeps the story together. She financed the play. She’s a has-been trying to make a comeback so she’s stressed.”

Maycock likened her role to that of Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 comedy, The Rivals. Her name comes from the French mal à propos meaning “inappropriate,” which fits the character because she constantly uses an incorrect word in place of the similar-sounding word she meant to use. This has come to be called a malapropism.

“Dottie is full of those,” Maycock said of malapropisms. “Her character in the play is just as scattered as Dottie is.”

It takes a smart actor to play a mixed-up character. Maycock described Visker, a sophomore, as “a very bright young woman. She’s clever and witty, and really sweet,” he said.

Avery Maycock, the director’s son, plays Garry LeJeune. “His job is to fall downstairs,” Maycock quipped. He went on, “In the play within the play, Nothing On, there’s a big, run-down estate, which the owner and his wife run to, to get away from the taxman. Garry shows up with a co-worker, Vicki, for a rendezvous. Garry has convinced Vicki that it is his house.”

Vicki is played by Anna Fernandez. “We’ve been rolling in the aisle,” Maycock said of her performance.

Both couples are in the house — “with a lot of door-slamming,” said Maycock — unaware at first that the other couple is there, too.

Then there’s Belinda, played by Hannah Hernandez. “Belinda is a busybody, trying to be a cheerful mom, caring for everyone, working into love triangles and making them love quadrangles,” said Maycock.

Winsor Jewell plays Selsdon Mowbray who, said Maycock, is “motivated by whiskey…He sneaks a drink whenever he can.”

Eliana Rowe plays stage manager Poppy Norton-Taylor, who “is very timid and shy and can’t hold everything together,” said Maycock.

The cast is rounded out by Shane Walsh, playing Frederick Fellowes. “He’s sad; he’s had a recent loss in life,” said Maycock, noting it becomes comic because, “Whenever anything violent happens, he gets a nosebleed.”

“This cast all gets along,” Maycock concluded. “The veterans and the new kids all feel like they’re accomplishing something together.”

Maycock says the 1992 film Noises Off was rated PG-13 and had “a little more innuendo” than the way The Guilderland Players are staging the production. He notes, for example, the couples sneaking off for a “private intimate time — we’ve downplayed that so nobody’s offended,” he said.

Elementary-aged children might enjoy the slapstick, he said, but probably wouldn’t understand the word plays. “Older kids and adults,” though, he said, “will get it all and love it.”

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The Guilderland Players will perform Noises Off on Nov. 6, 7, and 8 at 7 p.m. in the auditorium at Guilderland High School at 8 School Road in Guilderland Center. Tickets, available at the door on a first-come, first-served basis, cost $5.