Mask and Bauble’s “Black Comedy,” written by Peter Shaffer and directed by Hunter Styles (COL ’08), is a bright, raucous show filled with bubbly British accents and witty jokes that bring the complexities of sexuality to light.
“Black Comedy” opens on a darkened stage as aspiring sculptor Brindsley Miller (Jason Robert Miliken, COL ’11) and his shrill fiancé Carol (Victoria Glock-Molloy, COL ’11) bustle about preparing his disheveled apartment for the arrival of her father and a German art connoisseur. Brindsley, a master of the indignant squeak of horror, has stolen his neighbor’s antique furniture at Carol’s bidding, eager to make an impression on her stalwart military father. Mid-scramble, the stage is suddenly illuminated with blinding white light—revealing the flat’s tiled floor, avant-garde sculpture and stolen furniture—but Carol and Brindsley scream and thrash about blindly. Bright light represents a black-out in the apartment; light and dark are reversed on-stage, so the characters can only see when fumbling about in the dark.
The neighbors begin to trickle into the apartment as the lights go out, and Brindsley’s old maid neighbor Miss Furnival (Marissa Reeves, COL ’08) joins the bright confusion by plopping down on the stolen sofa, staunchly refusing any alcohol. Carol, eyes perpetually squinting, flails and shrieks about until her father, the slight but convincingly gruff-voiced Colonel Melkett (Sean Sullinger, MSB ’10) arrives to inspect the stolen goods with his lighter.
The action moves slowly (the sometimes painful accents don’t help) until another neighbor joins the hubbub—Harold Gorringe (Donald F. Burke III, COL ’10), the owner of the stolen furniture. Harold, who reveals an intimate knowledge of Brindsley’s hand shape and bedroom and personal habits, is the first skeleton in Brindsley’s closet to come to light.
As can be expected in the sexually-charged atmosphere, the cast rolls from farce to farce, some predictable—Miss Furnival gets the gin instead of her lemonade—and some delightfully bizarre and completely unexpected—an electrician arrives with an erotic sculpture. The appearance of Clea (Miranda Hall, COL ’11), an old bohemian lover of Brindsley’s, finally gives the play a solid humorous backbone. Hall’s accent is by far the most authentic, and she doubles the fun by switching between the roles of a cockney housekeeper and her manipulative self.
The rhythm of the script saves the comedy from turning into a merely droll drama bursting with unbearably stylized accents. It is impossible to remain distant and critical when confronted with Brindsley’s horror-struck, sweat-beaded face—the ironic humor of “Black Comedy” is irresistible and completely engrossing.
While the beginning is, at some points, painfully slow and awkwardly acted, the actors are eventually carried away by the energy of their own words, and they manage to bring the play to a delightful climax. Hall, as Clea, steals the show with her expertly accented antics and sexual games, and Burke, as Harold, provides a great comedic draw with his one-liners and indignant voice cracks. Colonel Melkett best sums up “Black Comedy” as he prods a stolen Buddha by the glow of his lighter: “That’s what I call a real work of art—you can see what it’s meant to be. (Klonopin) ”
