Play: Black Comedy

Overview

Black Comedy, written by Peter Shaffer and first produced in 1965, is a high-energy farce built around one of modern theatre's cleverest staging tricks. The play unfolds almost entirely in a single London flat and trades on rapid reversals, physical mishaps and escalating embarrassment as a routine social visit spirals out of control. Its comic engine is both situational and visual: mistakes pile on mistakes until a final restoration forces truth into the open.
Shaffer's tone is breezy, pointed and gleefully cruel at times. Dialogue is sharp and economical, and the plot races forward on the rhythm of misunderstandings, pratfalls and the characters' attempts to maintain appearances even as circumstances undo them.

Plot

A young sculptor and his partner prepare to entertain guests in the hope of repairing both finances and reputations. The evening begins with polite manners and thinly veiled anxieties: unpaid bills, romantic tensions and fragile social standing lurk under the surface. Hosts and visitors alike are juggling secrets they hope the night will bury.
When a power cut plunges the flat into darkness, all pretense collapses into chaotic improvisation. Characters grope, hide and blunder, trying to conceal affairs, thefts and ego bruises; the blackout removes visual restraint and amplifies misunderstandings. Each attempt to fix a problem creates new complications, and layers of deception are peeled back until the eventual reappearance of light forces candid reckonings and abrupt reversals of fortune.

Theatrical Device

The play's most famous feature is a lighting inversion that turns a potentially static blackout into a dynamic stage event. To show the audience what characters cannot see, the stage is brightly lit when the characters are "in the dark" and plunged into semi-darkness when the characters think they can see. Actors must mime fumbling blindness under full light and move confidently in low visibility, a convention that produces visual irony and precise timing.
This device does more than produce sight gags; it reorients theatrical expectation and invites the audience into complicity. Viewers observe secrets that characters try to hide, savor dramatic irony and witness the choreography of error. The technical requirement is exacting, and successful productions exploit the trick to maximize both physical comedy and narrative surprise.

Themes and Tone

Black Comedy satirizes manners, pretension and the fragility of social performance. The blackout functions as a metaphor for sudden candor: when the ordinary lights go out, the carefully managed façades and polite lies begin to collapse. Shaffer delights in exposing hypocrisy and in showing how quickly people resort to self-preservation, rationalization and petty cruelty when embarrassed.
Despite its barbed social commentary, the play remains an affectionate exercise in theatercraft. Comedy derives from character contradictions as much as from circumstance, and the work balances verbal wit with slapstick. The pace is relentless, which keeps the mood electric even as the revelations grow nastier and more absurd.

Production and Legacy

Black Comedy quickly became one of Shaffer's most popular early pieces and a staple of comic theatre because the central stunt makes every staging an event. Its mix of technical audacity and ensemble precision appeals to directors and audiences alike, and revivals frequently showcase inventive lighting and choreography. The play also helped establish Shaffer's reputation for blending theatrical invention with psychological acuity, paving the way for the darker, more serious works that followed.