Review: Black Comedy

Reviewed by John Wakefield

Listen to our preview on the (URY PLAYER)) here

So can you tell us a bit about the play?

Well Black comedy is essentially a farce by Peter Shaffer, now many of you may know Shaffer for his epic biography of Mozart, ‘Amadeus’ which is a really serious production but this is far from that. Black Comedy is a classic farce where every setup is obvious but the conclusion of all that is very satisfying.

Its about an artist called Brindsley ,played by Freddie Elletson , in this production who is desperately trying to impress both his future father in law and the world’s richest man Bamberger. They are all coming and they’ve stolen their next door neighbor’s furniture who’s supposedly away for the weekend and then of course it goes horribly wrong and the fuse blow and they are all put into complete and utter darkness.  And that is of course why it is caused black comedy.

And What did you think of the performance itself?

The performance was fantastic, its one of the finest performances i've seen in the barn with each character in the play is undoubtedly a stereotype performed masterfully by the Dramasoc actors.  Brindsley played by Freddie Elletson was highly convincing, as you felt his fear throughout the whole thing and his incredible overreaction convied his terror at every moment. Carol his fiancée played brilliantly by Edith Kirkwood was very uptight, came across brilliantly vocally and was just wonderful to watch. And everyone else was simply brilliant with Tom Crowley in particularly as the Colonel as you never got a smile out of him, everything being completely dead pan which really, really made the audience roar with laughter.  As did the character of Harold who was the epitome of camp played by Sam Lawson and that never letup throught the entire piece.  The same can be said for the uptight but very drunk Ms Fernival played by Stephanie Bartlett and also Clea by Laura Horton was brilliantly cunning and seductive but i won't reveal much about her character so you can go and see it. And Schuppanzigh played by Odinn Hilmarsson was also one of the best performances of the show. I can't really fault anyone to be honest, i felt the whole cast stood out beautifully in this production.

It sounds like its got a good mix of characters in as well…

The interaction between all the characters was superb, the whole thing about this performance is that its inverted whenever there is darkness the stage lights are up so you can see everything perfectly but all the characters have to be groping around in the darkness and this was done superbly. No character ever made exact eye contact with the other and you could always feel where the character felt the other one instead of where they had moved too, as this all sort of evolves this becomes more and more hilarious and all the jokes are built up around this leading to a hilarious finale which you need to see it to work out. But this is something i have to praise Sam Briggs and Katie Lambert’s direction, as i think choreographed is not too strong of a word, because it was beautifully choreographed. Every movement was perfect so each character should be there leading to this whole sort of mesh up of farce and humor that i have to say the audience last night just found hilarious.

Talking about the choreography and stage lighting, what did you think of the set itself?

It was excellently done, I'd never seen anything quite like it in the drama barn so far. From the moment you enter the barn you were in 18 Scarlatti gardens, which is the house. The moment you went through those doors you were surrounded by paintings, sculptor all on the walls it was all lit before you even went in. And even the seating was arranged of domestic furniture, i myself sat and lounged in an armchair which was wonderful being something I've never been able to do for a theatre performance before which really added to it. And also they had built up a second level in the drama barn so that there was a bedroom upstairs which was very clever and something i couldn't imagine doing in that very small space. It always amazes me how much you can get out of the small space of the drama barn, it is a very versatile space and the creative of how they managed to use especially in black comedy but of course in other productions always amazes me.

Can we just get some closing thoughts on Black Comedy?

Its one of the funniest shows I've seen ever full stop and the performances just made it brilliant. I've read some instances of corpsing apparently taking places but certainly for me I never noticed these and I felt it was a slick performance throughout. And while i felt there were a couple of tiny technical problems i felt were first night nerves, i can see it one of the finest performances in the drama barn this term and not just worthy of the barn but worthy of the west end too.

And you can hear the review in full as part of YorWorld (along with an interview with 'Shooting Stars' scorer and mobile caterer of the year Angelos Epithemiou) on the ((URY PLAYER)) here