Black Comedy

The second visit in a week to Norwich School as part of gather26.  Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy remains an ingenious theatrical concept. First performed in 1965 the play is written to be staged under a reversed lighting scheme.  The play opens on a darkened stage, 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.

The plot centres on struggling sculptor Brindsley Miller, who has borrowed expensive furniture to impress both his fiancée’s father and a wealthy art collector. As unexpected visitors arrive and the blackout continues, the situation spirals into increasingly chaotic and comic territory.

This Norwich School’s production faced a considerable challenge from the outset. Scripts were only distributed in early May and the cast had just two Saturdays of rehearsal. Furthermore, Shaffer’s original 90-minute play had been compressed into around 45 minutes. While this made for a brisk evening, it inevitably affected the intended gradually increasing frenzy of the farce. The slow accumulation of misunderstandings that normally drives the play towards its climax was necessarily pushed through, with characters and situations briskly brought to life.

Tom Hardy and Sophie Millington quickly established the central relationship between Brindsley Miller and Carol Melkett. Sophie Millington brought plenty of energy to Carol with full-blooded enthusiasm; a slight reduction in some of the facial reactions would have allowed the comedy to land more naturally.  Tom Hardy (playing the part Derek Jacobi first played in 1965!) had immediate stage presence with the increasing desperation required.

Among the supporting cast, Evie Gale made a memorable Miss Furnival, charting the supposedly teetotal spinster’s rapid descent into drunkenness with gusto—perhaps rather too rapidly, due to the shortened script. Daisy Seaton was suitably bombastic as Colonel Melkett, capturing the character’s blustering authority to good effect.

Ella Barnovschi brought confidence and presence to the role of Clea, the glamorous ex-lover whose arrival further complicated Brindsley’s evening. Strong support also came from Benji Stevenson as Harold Gorringe, Louis Backer as Schuppanzigh, and Will Clarke as Georg Bamberger, each contributing effectively to the escalating confusion.

Credit should go to Jon Mardlin and the technical team; Black Comedy is very demanding from a technical perspective, with every lighting cue and movement needing precise coordination to sustain the illusion that the audience can see while the characters cannot. The production’s success depends heavily on this technical discipline.

Good attention to period detail (e.g.record player and standard lamp)

Compressing a carefully structured farce into half its original running time was always going to be a difficult ask and while some of the play’s characteristic slow-burn development was lost, the cast rose well to the challenge delivering an entertaining and ambitious production of one of Shaffer’s most inventive comedies.

I enjoyed the play immensely – many thanks for your warm welcome.

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