Ayckbourn knows how to construct funny stage pictures: in the second act, for instance, while the unnoticing guests prattle on around her, Eva Mireille Enoss), the wife of an architect, mute with grief over the collapse of her marriage, makes various attempts at suicide — flinging herself at the window, at the stove, and at a butcher knife propped up in a drawer.
After Dallas McMurray, a fine dancer with the doughy face of an eternal choirboy, falls onto the stage as if dumped there by God, he does an anguished (but not histrionic) mercy-seeking solo and other dancers walk by upstage, unnoticing.
One woman, entering, seems to listen to one man's heart; two other women, unnoticing, dance in the background.
Secure in it, it can feel as mundane and necessary as air – you exist within it, almost unnoticing.
We hope we can compensate in some way for the unnoticing American audiences of six decades ago.
The tip of Hannah's tongue stuck out in concentration; unnoticing, Joel sucked his brush, so that his lips were blue.
"In Book 22 of the 'Iliad,' " Wood writes in a discussion of wrinkles in narrative time, "Hector's wife is at home warming his bath though he has in fact died moments before; Auden praised Bruegel, in 'Musée des Beaux Arts,' for noticing that, while Icarus fell, a ship was calmly moving on through the waves, unnoticing.
