The gentlemen of Severn Hill take to the stage for Black Comedy

Peter Shaffer’s one-act farce, Black Comedy, is the perfect house play: it’s short, it’s funny and it necessitates PVC go-go boots. What’s not to love?

The joke at the centre of the play, borrowed from Chinese theatre, is the reversal of darkness and light. The play begins in pitch black, and the audience giggle nervously as the dialogue gets underway in darkness. Has there been a technical glitch? Has the lighting operator walked out?

Then, at the very moment when the hero announces, ‘we've blown a fuse’, the stage suddenly blazes with light. This pays off richly in a number of ways. For a start, the characters are revealed: the ambitious young sculptor, Brindsley (Felix R (UVI)) and his posh girlfriend Carol (Sam U (UVI)). There is the visual gag of seeing Brindsley stumbling around in the supposed dark, trying to replace the antique furniture he has pinched from a pretentious neighbour. Shaffer also suggests that darkness discloses hidden truths: only in the blackout does Brindsley discover that he is far closer to his ex, Clea, than to his vacuous fiancée. The play throws characters from wildly differing backgrounds into uncomfortably close quarters, and much of the comedy derives from their divergent views: bohemian conceptual artists bump up against pompous traditionalists, and the daughter of a teetotal Baptist minister finds herself sharing a sofa with a gin-swilling deb.

The gentlemen of Severn Hill have produced a number of superb house plays in recent years, including their Rankin Cup-winning production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). This week’s offering maintained their impressive standard, thanks in large part to the core cast of Upper Sixth boys who have performed in every house production during their five years at school: Felix, Sam, Joss G (UVI) and Ryan M (UVI).

Sam U was fabulously ghastly as Carol, reaching a pitch only bats could hear as he berated the long-suffering Brindsley and Harold Gorringe (Fourth Former Robbie L).  The role of Clea – Brindsley’s glamorous ex-girlfriend – was originally played by Maggie Smith, but the dame herself might be jealous of the poise and allure the scarlet-clad Ed B (LVI) brought to the role. Will H (LVI) gave a brilliant cameo as an intellectual electrician, while Mikhail M (V) made his theatrical debut as the billionaire Bamburger.

The show was stolen, however, by Joss G and Ryan M as Colonel Melkett and Miss Furnival. Joss’s braying, impressively trousered colonel stalked around the stage like an enraged hippopotamus, whilst Ryan gave us a marvellous rendition of the repressed spinster, bewailing the rise of sex and supermarkets.

Sadly, Joss was unable to perform on Saturday night, having broken his leg securing the First XI’s place in the National quarter-finals. He was replaced – at heroically short notice – by Jim B (V), who came on stage script-in-hand and kept the show on the road. The cast and director TPP are enormously grateful for Jim’s impressive display of house spirit. Up the hill!

Dr Helen Brown

Director of Drama