BLACK COMEDY

Orange Tree Theatre

★★★★

“farcically over the top – but that’s what it’s all about”

There is something intrinsically satisfying about watching somebody dig themselves deeper and deeper into a hole. Witnessing others’ misfortunes – especially in a theatre environment – isn’t driven by cruelty. Psychologists and philosophers have written pages on the subject of ‘schadenfreude’, but most of us enjoy the sensation without giving it a second thought. Which is why television shows like ‘You’ve Been Framed’ are popular. Farce is funny. It works best by putting ordinary people into extreme, out-of-control predicaments; the humour coming from watching them try to maintain their dignity and hide their secrets, while all around everything is falling apart.

Playwright Peter Shaffer certainly knew how to tap into this concept when he created the characters for his 1965 one-act comedy “Black Comedy”. And then he added another trick, borrowed from Chinese theatre, where he would reverse darkness and light. The play, set in a young sculptor’s South Kensington flat, opens in pitch black. When a fuse blows plunging the flat into darkness, the stage is illuminated. We see everything, while the characters are stumbling around in the dark. What ensues is seventy-five minutes of joy, watching the disintegration of order coupled with seeing how the darkness reveals truths that the characters manage to hide in the light.

A simple but ingenious conceit made trickier by playing it completely in the round: the expertise required by the cast is magnified, yet they pull it off superbly. Fledgling sculptor Brindsley (Joe Bannister) and his fiancé Carol (Leah Haile) are preparing to meet a rich and influential art dealer. Anxious to impress, Brindsley has ‘borrowed’ some expensive antiques from his neighbour Harold (Simon Manyonda) without his knowledge. Meanwhile, Brindsley’s former mistress, Clea (Patricia Allison), is threatening a comeback, while Carol’s father – Colonel Melkett (Jason Barnett) – has arrived to check out his prospective son-in-law. Teetotal neighbour Miss Furnival (Julia Hills) enters, seeking refuge from her fear of the dark.

Caroline Steinbeis, making her directorial debut at the Orange Tree Theatre, handles the intricacies and the chorographical demands with panache. Aided by physical comedy consultant, John Nicholson, the fast-paced chaos unfolding on stage feels natural despite the precise and intricate blocking required. Occasionally things fall out of synch, but we barely notice amongst the intentional mayhem. Bannister has faultless comic timing, pitching pauses perfectly during which we can almost hear his brain working out how to get out of the next mess he’s found himself in. Haile’s Carol is teasing and playful, a willing accomplice to her fiancé’s deceptions, simultaneously rebelling against her military father while wrapping him around her finger. Barnett gives a gentle giant of a performance as the colonel; imposing but bumbling, regimental in his speech but betraying a taste for subversion.

The laughs increase in tandem with the number of people onstage. When Harold returns early, much of the humour derives from Brindsley’s doomed attempts to replace all of his belongings before the lights come back on. Physical comedy comes to the fore, around which Manyonda – as Harold – dances with a camp joie de vivre, until it turns to gleeful horror when truths are revealed. Hills is a delight as Miss Furnival, accidentally discovering the joys of alcohol in the darkness. Allison is a gorgeously impish Clea, who delights in the advantageous observer’s position in which she finds herself. A mischievous smile follows her every movement and sentence – it is clear she is relishing the chaos. When Schuppanzigh the electrician (Chris Chilton) arrives, he is mistaken for the rich art dealer in a wonderfully slapstick, though slightly predictable, comedy of errors. The real art dealer has barely more than a walk on role, but Javier Marzan makes the most of it.

A whirlwind of a show, it works well up close. Dangerously up close for the performers, but they use the audience to great and comic effect. It is farcically over the top – but that’s what it’s all about. As a play, “Black Comedy” is as light as they come, and great fun. A reminder that, at times, theatre is simply pure, joyous entertainment without needing to be anything more.

BLACK COMEDY

Orange Tree Theatre

Reviewed on 27th May 2026

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Sam Taylor

BLACK COMEDY

★★★

“The score, though, is an eclectic delight with vocal performances that are quite magical”

A few years ago, one might have been thrown off balance by the prospect of a musical about a convicted murderer and the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom. But it is a sign of the times that, in an age where no subject matter escapes the songfest treatment, barely an eyebrow is raised. But that hasn’t curbed the curiosity and anticipation that has surrounded “Ruth: The Musical”; the story of Ruth Ellis who shot and killed her violent, upper-class lover. A story of love, death, obsession, sex, jealousy and murder.

Ruth Ellis’ life has been covered in film and TV, but this stage adaptation goes a step further with its quest to empathise with her. It is a tall order which will surely provoke debate, but it adds contrasting and dramatic layers to a character who is chiefly recognised by mugshots and newspaper headlines. It is these headlines that open the show, projected onto the back wall of the atmospheric Wilton’s Music Hall stage, as dry ice snakes its way out of the wings, followed by the cast, silhouetted against the monochrome backdrop. We are in film noir territory, enhanced by an emotive and powerful ensemble opening number.

Written by Caroline Slocock and co-composed by John Cameron, Francis Rockliff and James Reader, it features Ruth at three stages of her life. ‘Cell Ruth’ (Bibi Simpson) is the first we meet. Ben Bull’s video design evocatively suggest the stark prison cell in which Ruth sits in conversation with Pierrepoint (a wonderfully down to earth yet mysterious Ian Puleston-Davies), one of the prison staff, whose specific job description I have to resist giving away. Between them they are looking back over Ruth’s life. Simpson cuts a hypnotic figure while her affected upper-class accent cleanly slices the muddy acoustics of the hall. The bulk of the story is portrayed in flashback by Hannah Traylen as ‘Past Ruth’, the nightclub ‘hostess’, surrounded by her lovers, colleagues and cohorts. Tagged onto the narrative is the appearance of ‘Young Ruth’ (Me-Li Yap) which seeks, less successfully, to demonstrate the abuse she received at the hands of her father.

Under the co-direction of Andy Morahan and Denise Silvey, the staging is beautifully executed (excuse the pun). Full of split levels and split scenes, the transitions from pre to post murder are seamless. The fact we already know the outcome heightens the poignancy of Ruth’s earlier struggles as she tries to make her way in the male-dominant, class-conscious society she has chosen. Traylen’s ‘Past Ruth’ is as equally a tragic figure as her resigned older self, but with more defiance. The story focuses on her chaste relationship with the devoted Desmond (John Faal) and the intense love affair with posh but penniless racing driver, David Blakely (Connor Payne). The stakes are somewhat low, however, and although the bullets may fly, the sparks never leave the ground. Payne’s ill-fated Blakely is uninspiring, stripping away any belief we might have in the fatal attraction he is supposed to ignite in Ruth. Much of the dialogue is delivered on one level and the emotional peaks invariably feel unearned.

The musical numbers, likewise, appear unearned at times. The score, though, is an eclectic delight (especially in the first act) with vocal performances that are quite magical. Late night jazz rubs shoulders with soulful ballads and rousing ensemble chorales; with a surreal comedy number thrown in to break up the seriousness of the courtroom scene. John Cameron’s filmic and sultry arrangements complement the narrative in what is more of a play with music rather than a musical. There is an undeniable glossy sheen to the show which only hints at the darkness beneath. We would like a more dangerous and grittier illustration that digs deeper. There is a quite crucial reveal for example, in the lead up to Ruth’s hanging, that could have been expanded upon. Otherwise, the elements are all present – the blonde femme fatale, the violent hard-drinking lover, the smoking pistol, the trial and the execution – even if the passion and the shock value elude us. Although not to die for, it is definitely a show to keep in one’s sights. The aim is right – it hasn’t quite reached the target yet.

Tag Archives: Simon Slater

BLACK COMEDY

★★★★

Orange Tree Theatre

BLACK COMEDY

Orange Tree Theatre

★★★★

“farcically over the top – but that’s what it’s all about”