'Black Comedy'
Black Comedy by Peter Shaffer, directed by Lou Jacob.
Take a 40-year-old comedy with a gimmick and throw it up on stage and see what happens: laughter.
Sometimes, as Barrington Stage Company proves with its latest endeavor, all you really need to do with a classic is do it right. Don’t update it. Don’t try to "fix" it for today’s audience. Just do it the way it was written and do it right.
That’s what they’ve done with Peter Shaffer’s comic delight, "Black Comedy" which first saw its stage quirks in the United States in 1967.
A cast of masterful troupers, including Lynn Redgrave, Michael Crawford, Donald Madden, Geraldine Page and Peter Bull took over the stage in this clever, British farce about a disastrous evening in the London apartment of sculptor Brindsley Miller.
Expecting his fiance’s father to visit at the same time as an important, and wealthy, collector of art is anticipated, Miller is extremely nervous. He has "borrowed" expensive furniture from his neighbor who is out of town and he has worked himself into a state of near-hysteria about meeting "Dad" and just at the wrong moment the fuse blows out and plunges the place into a pitch-black nightmare. For the balance of the evening, the building is without electricity and no one can see anything.
That’s the plot and the gimmick. In truth, the play is one that manages to do all this in reverse, something I probably shouldn’t put in print. But anyone seeing it will know it all too soon anyway. The fun here is as much physical comedy as situational or verbal comedy as everyone copes with the limited vision available in a totally dark space. Director Lou Jacob along with a talented cast has developed very individual physical movements for each character as they express themselves in their situation.
One of the funniest is Miss Carol Melkett, the fiancee, played by Nell Mooney. Her method of finding her way about in the dark is to dance the hula. Don’t try to understand that — you have to see it. Her distinct opposite is Miller’s ex-girlfriend Clea; gone for a few months, she obviously has spent a lot of time in this place in the dark before this. As played by Ginifer King, she is the winner in the groping sweepstakes, both as groper and gropee. King and Mooney are so different in their roles they almost serve as counterweights in the tale. Where Mooney is hysterically funny to watch, King takes over the verbal sparring with wit and charm. They make a nice team, trading funny moments for nearly half the 86-minute play.
Gerry Bamman plays Carol’s father, Colonel Melkett. The only man with a lighter, his work with the furniture is unbelievably funny, particularly his relationship with a rocking chair. A good actor, nothing can toss Bamman out of character and he maintains his gruff demeanor even in the face of the funniest acrobatics of the play.
There are two neighbors caught in the dark as well. Miss Furnival, from upstairs, is delivered to the stage by Beth Dixon in a performance that is howlingly funny. Her accent, and her lines create her character, but her delivery of them through some odd physical couplings, especially her relationship with a divan, is very funny indeed and very much in keeping with who Miss Furnival is in life. The neighbor from across the hall, the one whose furniture has been "borrowed" is played by Mark H. Dold in a performance that redefines the word "huff." Where Bamman’s Melkett is stiff but forgiving, Dodd’s Harold Gorringe is limp but immune to apologies.
Caught in the middle of the muddle he himself has created is Brindsly Miller, played by Brian Avers. Avers plays a non-stop furniture moving, clothing-challenged, mildly immoral, sexually ambiguous and vaguely ingenue protagonist. While our sympathies are with him at the outset, but the final curtain it is hard to continue rooting for him as he seems to have gotten everything wrong through no fault other than his own ambition. Avers plays the tangible and vigorous aspects of his part wonderfully well. He brings a bit less to the human side of Miller and leaves us (at least me) a little bit turned off and unsympathetic. It would be a hard trick to feel bad for this man who has made a muck-up of just about everything. On the other hand, I remember feeling that way toward Michael Crawford’s Miller way back in 1967. Of cours,e I was much younger and more ambitious myself and that may have had something to do with that.
The entire company, including Gordon Stanley as Schuppenzigh and Robert Lydiard as Bamberger, deliver one hundred percent. The laughter is rolicking and the surprises never cease. They do this with the able assistance of Scott Pinkney’s subtle, and not-so-subtle, lighting on a perfectly marvelous set by Adrian W. Jones. Ilona Somogyi has enhanced the period look of the play with costumes that reek of the late 1960s.
If this doesn’t emerge as the unlikely Big Hit of the summer season I will be very surprised. Black Comedy is not a mere trifle, not just a show with a gimmick. It is a well-played, well-produced comic marvel and certainly the show to see as quickly as possible. You might even want to go back a second time.
Black Comedy plays at Barrington Stage’s main stage on Union Street in Pittsfield through Aug. 4. Ticket prices range from $34-$54. For tickets and scheduled call the box office at 413-236-8888 or go to their website at www.barringtonstageco.org.