Nov. 04, 2009 - Issue #733: Broke
Black Comedy: No need for lights
Black Comedy carries all the malarky of a British sitcom while keeping its actors in the dark
It's the audience that's blind in the exposition as Brindsley (Nikolai Witschl) busily prepares his flat to host his fiancée Carol's "monster father," Colonel Melkett. In the dark, you can hear he and Carol (Delia Barnett) stealing the neighbour's posh furniture while Brindsley explains that he's invited the richest man in the world, Georg Bamberger, to view his artwork—the plan being that the Colonel (Adam Cope) will witness Bamberger buy one of Brindsley's gaudy, asymmetrical sculptures and accept him as a suitable candidate for son-in-law.
There's a lot of irony played in Shaffer's dialogue as Brindsley and Carol comment on how wonderful everything looks, and it does sound quite lovely until you actually get a glimpse of it. In the play's eponymous twist, the onstage lights flick on when Brindsley's power goes out to reveal a ridiculously mismatched British apartment, designed by Robert Shannon. The flat features floral wallpaper panels complimented by the tasteful neighbour's stolen furniture, but contrasted by Brindsley's primary coloured '60s-style "contemporary" flourishes on the banisters and corners of the room. Making things somewhat uglier are Brindsley's awful sculptures, which set the rest of the regal but grandmotherly surroundings rather off-kilter.
As the pair bump around trying to find a fuse to restore the light before Carol's Daddy arrives, Brindsley's neighbours start showing up. Mary Hulbert is an absolute gas as the uptight Miss Funival, who happens to be scared of the dark. Then, to Brindsley's horror, Harold Gorringe (the dandy neighbour with good taste in furniture) returns from his vacation early and drops in to wait out the electrical problem with company. Elliot James is delightful as the saucy, quick-tongued Harold, who acts as the catalyst for airing Brindsley's dirty laundry—most of which arrives later on in the form of Brindsley's other girlfriend, the vengeful Clea (Carmela Sison).
With Harold's arrival, Brindsley realizes he's in quite a spot of trouble, and sets out to perform the ultimate livingroom switcheroo. Between his nervous, high-pitched guffaws and plenty of face-first falls, Witschl expertly commands the comedic pace of the show, ducking under swinging arms with Chaplinesque ease. There are a lot of audience gasps as Witschl lifts chairs over the other characters' unsuspecting heads, and bursts of laughter as he smacks them around while replacing Harold's prized furniture with his own cheaper, sillier-looking pieces—especially funny is the bemused and increasingly frustrated Adam Cope as the Colonel. There's no shortage of ass- and boob-grabbing, and after a while you start to feel like director Kim McCaw crafted it so that you feel like you're sitting in the studio audience for the filming of a low-budget British sitcom.
What's truly, um, revealing is how the characters behave when the others can't see them: Miss Funival picks her nose and proceeds to get blisteringly drunk, Brindsley makes rude faces at people and violently tries to prevent Harold and Clea from ruining his chances with Carol and the Colonel, and all of them take vocal jabs at Clea the tramp, who has actually entered unnoticed. Desperately, Brindsley tries to save the situation by proclaiming that the other presence in the house is his Cockney cleaning lady, which gives Clea an open window to reveal him as the thieving cheater he truly is.
In the end, the dark is the one thing Brindsley cannot hide in, and it's his total bastard behaviour that makes it very, very easy to laugh at him. V
Until Sat, 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
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