The new season is on the horizon and we want to take this time, during the long, hot (yay!) days of summer, to introduce our 09/10 shows and give you a little more insight. Stay tuned for a one-on-one interview with the director of Black Comedy, Dean Paul Gibson, coming up Wednesday!
Black Comedy
Struggling artist Brindsley wants to impress his fiancée’s visiting father, so he dim-wittedly breaks into a 
neighbour’s flat and “borrows” the fancy furniture. But just as the last antique is set in place, a fuse blows and the lights go out! A litany of unexpected guests and mistaken identities throw the evening into chaos—but the darkness also sheds hilarious light on everyone’s true character.
Bill Millerd explains the central premise, “when the lights are up onstage, the lights (in the play) are out and when the lights go out (in the play), then the lights onstage go up. The comedy, then, comes from what happens when these people are moving around in the dark –which we can totally see– bumping into furniture and trying to impress the fiancée’s parents!”
Peter Shaffer (born 1926) is one of England’s most popular and respected playwrights; 
his work was equally successful in the United States, where he lived for most of his career. His most famous work includes The Five Finger Exercise; The Royal Hunt of the Sun; Black Comedy; Equus; Amadeus; and Lettice and Lovage. Amadeus, of course, won wide-spread acclaim as an Oscar-winning movie in 1984 and Equus was recently staged in London, starring Daniel Radcliffe (of Harry Potter fame.) Clearly, his works stand the test of time.
Written in 1965, the play’s central plot is concerned with class distinctions, private vs public personas, and the trappings of wealth–all concepts undergoing huge upheavals during this decade. Black Comedy is just that: comedy so dark and on the edge, it makes The Office look like The Facts of Life. Love British farce? This is it at its finest. Hi-jinks, hi-jinks, hi-jinks–as the action moves from one hilariously awful and painfully funny coincidence to the next. This is the sort of laugh-out-loud comedy that will pummel your abs and make you hide your face in horror.
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