Black Comedy

Peter Shaffer is having one of his periodic mini renaissances, with probably his two most popular plays – Equus and Amadeus – having London revivals lined up. The rest of his canon can be a little more obscure (bar the tricky to stage The Royal Hunt of the Sun), but Black Comedy is probably the best of his second tier plays, an extremely funny farce set in a fashionable flat in the mid-’60s when several groups of strangers unexpectedly turn up. The brilliant twist is that the scenes where the lights are on in the flat take place with the lights off, while for the scenes where the lights are on take place in total darkness. Caroline Steinbeis directs Javier Marzan and John Nicholson, formerly of the theatre company Peepolykus.