Buckle up: Michael Frayn’s lickety-split backstage farce Noises Off is on the boards through Sunday, Aug. 23 at Cygnet Theatre Old Town. Sean Murray directs.

A British touring company is having a few problems in its technical rehearsal for the sex farce Nothing On. Leading lady Dotty (Rosina Reynolds) has an unrewarding relationship with three props used in her first entrance: a telephone, a newspaper and a plate of sardines. She can’t seem to remember whether to take the sardines and leave the paper, hang up the phone and take the paper or just what. And she sometimes demonstrates only a passing acquaintance with her lines.

Director Lloyd (Albert Dayan) is becoming more exasperated by the minute – he’d just like to get through the rehearsal (after all, they open tomorrow night), but finds that less and less likely.

Noises Off, next to Copenhagen is probably Frayn’s best-known work Stateside, is an elaborate and hilariously silly play-within-a-play, illustrating the most outrageous disasters that could happen (and do, though not usually all on one night) onstage.

Don’t bother trying to keep up with who’s who. Murray emphasizes the hectic silliness, and with actors playing actors playing people, doors slamming, people and plates of sardines appearing and disappearing with amazing rapidity, it won’t pay to take anything here seriously.

“That’s what it’s about,” Lloyd tells Dotty. “Doors and sardines, getting on and off.”

Also subject to disappearance are elderly, hearing-impaired thespian Selsdon Mowbray (Jonathan McMurtry), playing a burglar, and a contact lens belonging to ingenue Brooke Ashton (Jessica John).

Reynolds and Dayan anchor the show, more than ably abetted by McMurtry, John, Sandy Campbell, Jason Connors, Jason Heil, Craig Huisenga and Kim Strassburger.

As one would expect, backstage romance and jealousy, bickering and backstabbing are on view – especially in the second act, where the scene shifts to the backstage area during performance. The backstage drama is carried on in silence, like a mime show, while the play goes on beyond.

Yep, these characters are stereotypes. Yes, the action is frantic and over the top. And oh, yes, they are very, very funny.

Noises Off runs through Sunday, Aug. 23, at Cygnet Theatre Old Town. Shows Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 7 p.m.; matinées Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 619-337-1525 or visit www.cygnettheatre.com.

There’s something to be said for updating the Gospels for modern consumption, but the current Lamb’s Players Theatre production of Godspell is teetering on the far-out edge of excess. The Stephen Schwartz (Wicked) /John-Michael Tebelak show plays an open-ended run at the Horton Grand Theatre in Downtown.

Lamb’s first produced Godspell during the 1982 recession, when the company couldn’t afford a fancy set. Resident set designer Mike Buckley used stuff he found in storage, pieces from previous shows. He’s done the same thing here: the walls are plastered with posters from other shows – Pippin, Uncle Vanya, Carnival – and there’s a minimal set.

Tebelak wrote Godspell in 1970 for a student project at Carnegie-Mellon University; when it seemed the show might have wider possibilities, college alum Stephen Schwartz was brought in to write new songs. They are pleasant, mostly upbeat, not especially sophisticated, clever or memorable. But they serve nicely to showcase the singing and dancing.

The plot is simple: Jesus (Lance Arthur Smith) returns to earth, appearing to a group of contemporary everyday people to explain and demonstrate the principles and relevancy of the Gospel to modern times.

On the way to modern relevance, Lamb’s tarts up the Gospel with a rap song about debt and forgiveness, a vaudeville routine, shimmying girls backing up the song “Bless the Lord” and a break-dancing Jesus.

Other modernizations brought giggles, including this update of the “eye of the needle” analogy: “It’s easier for Arnold Schwarzenegger to squeeze into a little Smart car than...” etc.

Also included: Jessica Couto, vamping it up with a red boa in “Turn Back, O Man” (“I’ve been on more laps than a napkin,” she says); Sarah Palin playing (and quitting) a “Jeopardy” game where the category is Parables; and a Borat-like character partying with wild and crazy friends.

Smyth has a terrific multicultural cast including Tracy Hughes, Jon Lorenz, Leonard Patton, Couto, Season Duffy and Greg Thompson. These folks can sing, dance and connect with an audience. And they have a fabulous four-piece band: Patrick Marion on keyboards, Jordan Kelly on guitar; David Rumley on drums and leading the band, and Oliver Shirley on bass.

For all its cheery bounciness, it should be said that the show comes across as preachy. The attitude seems to be that you’d be a fool not to believe. It doesn’t help that there’s a reference to that better show about Jesus – Rice and Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar – which also opened in 1971, covering roughly the same time period but in a less didactic way.

That said, Godspell is a well-produced show with terrific voices and updated choreography that will please the young.

Lamb’s Players Theatre’s production of Godspell plays an open-ended run at the Horton Grand Theatre. Shows Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinées Saturday at 4 and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 619-437-0600 or visit www.lambsplayers.org.

Flappers in short, fringed skirts and long strings of beads, the Charleston and jazz, bootleg hooch and women’s suffrage – ah, those great pre-crash roaring ’20s.

In the movies, Clara Bow – the “It” girl – symbolized the decade with that indefinable quality (though a combination of sex appeal, sass and girl-next-door hominess describes it fairly well). Coronado Playhouse presents the West Coast premiere of the 2001 musical The It Girl through Aug. 9, with Thomas Fitzpatrick directing.

A valentine to the decade and the film (rather than a bio-show about Clara Bow), The It Girl offers escapist decade-appropriate entertainment par excellence, with a silly romantic plot, tuneful melodies, energetic dancing and the required happy ending.

Betty Lou Spence (Shauna Riisoe), salesgirl in Waltham’s lingerie department in New York City, sets her sights (and sighs) on boss’ son Jonathan Waltham (Thomas Doyle) and mounts a campaign to get him.

She doesn’t have much competition, though snooty upper-crust Adela Van Norman (Meredith Russo), self-appointed girlfriend of Jonathan, gives it a shot.

When Betty is named winner of the “It girl” contest (an advertising ploy suggested by Jonathan’s fey friend Monty), Adela is pushed to more devious means.

But the result is the same as other attempts she describes amusingly in “A Perfect Plan,” a corker of a song detailing her bad luck in the snag-a-man department.

Betty’s campaign proceeds apace until that awful press (wouldn’t you know it?) nearly ruins it by running a bogus story about Betty being an unwed mother.

There’s some nice technical work here. The black-and-white costumes and sets, the action accented by occasional film-like strobe lighting, and a back screen showing snippets of silent films effectively set time and place. And Rick Shaffer holds the show together from the piano keyboard.

You can hear the ’20s in the innocence of Paul McKibbins’ melodies and BT McNicholl’s winking rhyme schemes (“a girl who’d make a Jesuit/give up on being celibate”). You’ll hear the rhythms of the time, too, in a waltz, a two-step, a lovely lullaby and several kick-up-your-heels dance numbers.

Riisoe is charming, perky and believable as Betty; she’s also the best singer of the bunch, with fine diction and enough breath power to carry.

Russo is a hoot as the scheming Adela; Amanda Everett’s portrayal of her mother makes it easy to see where Adela gets her chutzpah.

Nick Munson nearly steals the show with his “It” number and some fine footwork in the “Step Into Our Shoes” tap number with Betty and her roommate Molly (Stephanie Hester).

The It Girl may seem dated and tame to the younger generation (a young couple left our table at intermission), but for those who know enough about the history of the country and of musical comedy, The It Girl is a charming throwback.

The It Girl plays through Sunday, Aug. 9, at Coronado Playhouse. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinée Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 619-435-4856 or visit www.coronadoplayhouse.com.