Oct. 28, 2009 - Issue #732: Dan Mangan

Black Comedy

When the lights come up in Black Comedy, the actors are left stumbling in the dark

After a few minutes chatting with Nikolai Witschl about his upcoming role in Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy, it starts to sound like he's describing an episode of Fawlty Towers. His accent slips in and out of "RP"—he's demonstrating Received Pronunciation, the "standard British" oft heard in Shakespeare's theatre and amateur imitations of Patrick Stewart.

Studio Theatre's latest effort requires a sampling of dialects to be performed by the cast. There's a bit of cockney, some Northern British and at one point a couple of Germans get tossed in for good measure.

Now in his final year of the BFA Acting program at the University of Alberta, Witschl takes the lead in this production as Brindsley Miller, a young sculptor who's desperately trying to impress his soon-to-be-father-in-law and some wealthy prospective art buyers one night when the electricity in his flat happens to short circuit. Where the "black" comedy comes in is that a good part of the action takes place in the dark—sort of.

"The beauty of this show is that the lights are reversed," Witschl explains. "When all of the lights are off onstage, all of the characters can see and move around normally, but when the lights are on onstage, basically everyone is 'blind.'" Essentially, the audience is privy to all the shenanigans that happen while the characters are bumping around in "the dark"—see, isn't theatre grand?

In order to bone up for the physical demands of the show, some of which involve Witschl rearranging and removing entire furniture sets from the stage while in blackout, the cast is working with clown guru Michael Kennard (also known as the first half of Mump & Smoot).

"I haven't had time to do it yet, but I'm starting to count up all of the injuries that my character receives over the course of the show, and I'm pretty sure logistically that I should be in the hospital by the end," he laughs.

Witschl, whose tall, lithe stature bears some resemblance to that of a young John Cleese, notes that the comparison to everyone's favourite bumbling-but-acerbic hotel owner isn't too far off for his character.

"It's pretty much pure British farce. There's mistaken identity, a lot of close calls," Witschl explains. "My character basically is gambling throughout the entire show. He's gambling that he'll be able to lie his way out of this situation, and the more that he lies the deeper it gets."

Witschl describes Brindsley as "awkward and high strung but very good around the ladies, which is why he has both a fiancée and a mistress."  Of course, you get to see both women in the show, much to Brindsley's chagrin.

"It's kind of about honesty, and being able to cut your losses and seeing how far you can push the limits. What he wants at his core is for everyone to like him, but he does that through deception. Anytime anything goes on that he doesn't really want to talk about he kind of lies and struts his way around it, but the nature of this show is that inevitably his lies get brought to light." So to speak, right? V

Oct 29 – Nov 7 (7:30 pm)
Black Comedy
Written by Peter Shaffer
Directed by Kim McCaw
Starring Nikolai Witschl, Mary Hulbert, Delia Barnett
Timms Centre (87 Ave - 112 St), $10 – $20 

New comments for this entry have been turned off and any existing ones are hidden. We apologize for any inconvenience.