Black Comedy (play)
Black Comedy is a one-act farce by Peter Shaffer, first performed in 1965. The premise of the piece is that light and dark are transposed, so that when the stage is lit the cast are supposed to be in darkness and only when the stage is dark are they supposed to be able to see each other and their surroundings.
This article is about the play by Peter Shaffer. For the genre, see Black comedy.Black Comedy
1965
National Theatre
Chichester, England
English
9:30 on a Sunday night
Mid 1960s
South Kensington, London
Brindsley Miller's flat
In the play, a young sculptor and his fiancée have borrowed some expensive antique furniture from a neighbour's flat without his permission to impress an elderly millionaire art collector. When the power fails, the neighbour returns early, other people also arrive unexpectedly, and matters descend into near-chaos.
In the early spring of 1965, Kenneth Tynan, dramaturge of the National Theatre, commissioned Shaffer to write a one-act play to accompany a production of Miss Julie starring Maggie Smith and Albert Finney. Shaffer later wrote in the introduction to his 1982 Collected Plays:
Shaffer set about composing the play. To produce a more sustaining dramatic premise than the mere gimmick of inverse lighting, Shaffer devised the notion that one of the characters had a reason to actually keep the others in the dark. It was from this necessity that the idea of the stolen furniture was conceived, and the theme of lies was solidified. Brindsley would keep his guests in the dark – both figuratively and literally.
Tynan later said of the rehearsal process, "This was farce rehearsed in farce conditions." Owing to scheduling difficulties at Chichester, Black Comedy was given very little rehearsal time, and it opened without a single public preview. The play was directed by John Dexter – who had directed Shaffer's previous play The Royal Hunt of the Sun, and later directed Equus – with what Shaffer called "blazing precision." He added that "it was acted with unmatchable brio by Smith and Finney, by Derek Jacobi as an incomparable Brindsley, and by Graham Crowden as a savagely lunatic Colonel Melkett".[1]
Smith had previously starred in two of Shaffer's previous plays, The Private Ear and The Public Eye, which were performed as a double bill at the Globe Theatre.[2]
The play is written to be staged under a reversed lighting scheme: the play opens on a darkened stage. A few minutes into the action there is a short circuit, and the stage is illuminated to reveal the characters in a "blackout". On the few occasions when matches, lighters, or torches are lit, the lights grow dimmer.
Black Comedy was first presented at the Chichester Festival Theatre by the National Theatre on 27 July 1965, and subsequently at the Old Vic, London, directed by Dexter with the following cast:
Source: Playscript.[3]
Reception[edit]
Shaffer described the opening night of Black Comedy the performance as "a veritable detonation of human glee", and wrote of an audience member sobbing with laughter and calling out in pain.[1] The reviews were generally good. The Times said of the piece, "It may not be a milestone in the development of English drama, but it is a very funny play".[4] J. C. Trewin in The Illustrated London News thought the piece overlong: "If this were a revue, we might consider ten minutes ample".[5] The reviewer in The Stage concurred that the piece was too long, finding it "for some time clever, surprising, funny, until, fifteen minutes or so before the end Mr Shaffer's invention, and so the impact of the piece, weakens."[6] Claudia Cassidy in the Chicago Tribune also thought the play overlong, but noted that "some of the sight and sound gags are so flawless … that the audience is reduced to jelly".[7] The Tatler's reviewer found the play "one of the funniest farces I can remember seeing".[8] Penelope Gilliatt in The Observer gave the piece a moderate welcome but found it "a blinding idea not very boldly pursued".[9] In The Guardian, Philip Hope-Wallace called it "an uproarious piece of slapstick vaudeville … sometimes a little long, but it comes to a magnificent climax almost worthy of Feydeau".[10] When the first Broadway production opened in 1967, John Chapman wrote in The Daily News, found that the author sustained the comedy from start to finish: "I was sorry indeed when the stage went dark and the farce ended".[11]
Revivals[edit]
First Broadway production[edit]
Black Comedy was first presented in New York with White Lies at the Ethel Barrymore Theater by Alexander H. Cohen directed by Dexter with the following cast:
White Lies:
Film adaptation[edit]
In 1970, Peter Shaffer's twin brother, Anthony Shaffer, had adapted Black Comedy into a screenplay, announcing that it would be his next project, but the film was not produced.[17]
Licensing[edit]
The performance rights for Black Comedy are controlled by the Samuel French organisation.[18]