Theatre review: Black Comedy

1960s British farces rarely get revived these days, generally because they're built on attitudes and situations that haven't exactly aged well (with the exception of What The Butler Saw, which gets away with it because how horrible those attitudes and situations are is basically the whole point.) But back when I was in school our drama club did a scene from Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy so - about as long after that performance as it was from the play's 1965 debut - I gave the Orange Tree's revival a chance in what I had originally planned to be a weekend of Shaffer, pairing it with his more famous Equus. This is a much less violent affair, other than in the slapstick sense: The high concept is that the play begins in what the audience sees as complete darkness, but in which the characters can see perfectly well.

Impoverished sculptor Brindsley (Joe Bannister) and his fiancée Carol (Leah Haile) are preparing for a visit from millionaire art collector Georg Bamberger (Javier Marzan,) who might become his patron if he likes the work. To impress him they've "borrowed" neighbour Harold's antique furniture without his knowledge.

But just as they're preparing there's a blackout in the story, which in the play's conceit means the lights go up and the audience can see everything while the characters stumble blindly. With Harold (Simon Manyonda) returning unexpectedly early, the young couple have to sneak all his furniture into the neighbouring flat in the dark. Complicating matters are Carol's demanding father Colonel Melkett (Jason Barnett,) nervous, teetotal neighbour Miss Furnival (Julia Hills,) who keeps "accidentally" downing alcoholic drinks in the dark, and electrician Schuppanzigh (Chris Chilton,) whose voice is indistinguishable from Bamberger's.

The play doesn't suffer as badly as it might from the cultural changes of the last 61 years, although this seems to be largely because Caroline Steinbeis' production has smoothed out the more offensive stuff - certainly Manyonda's performance doesn't give away the fact that Harold is written as a big old camp gay stereotype (why yes this is the part I played at school, why do you ask?)

Unfortunately little else seems to have travelled into the 21st century either, particularly the jokes, which struggle to raise much of a smile. Granted, a lot of the laughs here come from the absurd physical comedy of characters flailing in the dark, but as Simon Daw's set has put a scaffolding tower leading to the upstairs bedroom in front of what is usually an unobstructed view, I didn't always catch what the cast were doing until a few seconds after everyone else, and had to rely on other audience members' laughter to figure out that anything had happened at all.

Patricia Allison is a reliably entertaining addition when she arrives, late on in the play, as Brindsley's ex-girlfriend (although he doesn't seem to have told her that) Clea, and with the target now being the philandering young man we get some fun moments as she casually announces a whole list of bedroom kinks to the unseen assembled party. It's mercifully short at least, but as I suspected it hasn't aged well - just not in quite the ways I was expecting.

Black Comedy by Peter Shaffer is booking until the 11th of July at the Orange Tree Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Sam Taylor.