How to see better in the dark

Last Sunday’s performance of Peter Schaffer’s Black Comedy (directed by

Alice Penn) opened with the lights going out and then closed with their being extinguished more permanently as it was the last show of that play and indeed the 2024 season of Suburban Players – the only reason why this reviewer cannot recommend it as a must-see.

Black Comedy is not about Kamala Harris, as a more obsessive Donald Trump voter might expect – set in the London bedsit land of the 1960’s (where Earl’s Court might be suspected from the Australian flag installed by the superb period touches of the set designed by Martin Taylor, Sylveen Smith and Pat González Ericsson), the plot centres on how a massive power cut frustrates the ambitions of bohemian sculptor Brindsley Miller to end his chronic poverty by snaring a wealthy fiancée into marriage ahead of cutting links with his bit on the side. That night he is expecting both the girl’s father, a martinet colonel, and a potential client, “the world’s richest man” who is also an avid art collector, seeking to impress the pair of them with the sophisticated furniture of his absent neighbour, the effetely aesthetic Harold Gorringe. Yet not only does a blown fuse plunge everything into darkness but both Gorringe and the yet-to-be-extinguished flame show up at exactly the wrong time – already trouble enough without his other neighbour, a Baptist spinster, mixing the drinks.

But how can an audience possibly follow this intricate plot if everything is in total darkness? Alice Penn (backed by assistant director Tomás Rademacher and stage manager Natalia Bonnano) squared that circle by reversing light and dark. The play begins with all lights out until the power cut, then returning in full unless somebody flashes a lighter or match when they are dimmed. Full marks to the lighting and sound managed by Vicky Visciglia, Alan Fraser and Wendy Hampton.

The cast is solid throughout with no weak links and the diction more impeccable than in some earlier productions this year. Ladies first – all performed well with Belén Spizzirri injecting the right touch of ingenuousness into the fiancée Carol Melkett, Carolina Alfonsín adding to the comedy with her involuntarily tipsy spinster Miss Furnival and Ana Luna Pogonza Kirschgen as the odd girl out Clea doubling her accents nicely when imitating a cockney char. Perhaps Valentín Fernández was the outstanding male performance as a constantly pouting Harold Gorringe but Tomás Martínez Christensen held the play together in the central role of Miller while Simon Chater was excellent in the role of the tyrannical Colonel Melkett. Martin Millán shone as much as possible as the billionaire George Bamberger, given the extreme brevity of his appearance amid a power cut.

Last but not least, Joe Elverdin as the improbably cultured German refugee electrician Schuppanzigh. One remarkable feature of Suburban Players is their continuous turnover. This reviewer only detected three names repeated in the cast the whole year: Nicolás Sansalone (the title role in Who’s in Bed with the Butler? and a cop in West Side Story), Michael Fortino (also the Butler play and Love Letters) and now last Sunday Elverdin following on from his Constantine Bouc in Murder on the Orient Express – how that man loves doing Continental accents!

Everything worked in last Sunday’s final performance, including the aforementioned and the wardrobe (with such period touches as miniskirts, two-toned shoes and baggy corduroys) in the cosy intimacy of the original San Isidro playhouse’s tiny stage. Comparisons are odious – superior in ingenuity of stage management, Black Comedy lacked the grand scale of West Side Story, Agatha Christie’s unique mastery of the mystery genre in Murder on the Orient Express or as hilarious a character as Sansalone’s butler but still a great finish to the year. Cannot wait to see what Suburban Players bring to the table in 2025.

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