The Doha Players community theatre group are celebrating their 60th Birthday.
From October 16 to 25, the group will perform Black Comedy, an adult play by Peter Shaffer, at the Student Centre Black Box Theatre, HBKU, Education City.
The original Broadway production of Black Comedy was nominated for five Tony Awards.
Black Comedy was first performed in 1965 in London. It ingeniously sets a social farce in the darkness of a London apartment after an electric fuse has blown. The action of the play takes place in Brindsley Miller’s apartment in South Kensington, London on a Sunday evening. Struggling artist Brindsley and his fiancé Carol are having a party with the aim of impressing Carol’s bombastic father, Colonel Melkett, and millionaire Georg Bamberger, who may buy some of Brindsley’s sculptures. They have borrowed (without permission) the furniture and effects of their fussy neighbour, Harold, to make the flat more presentable. Before the guests arrive the main fuse blows, plunging the flat into darkness; (the play operates on reverse lighting so that when the lights are on the stage is actually in near darkness but the actors have to act as if there is normal lighting. When the lights blow the lights come up but they have to act as if its complete darkness).
What follows is a frantic romp with unexpected visitors, mistaken identities, and surprises lurking in every dark corner. The result, as you might expect, is chaotic, disastrous – and very funny.
Black Comedy is a fast action, inventive and very funny farce. The best farce makes us take all the characters seriously even if their conditions are preposterous, and the more ridiculous the character is the more important it is that he appear human and the funnier we find it.
Tickets are on sale from THE One in Villaggio and Landmark for QR75.
The Players recent performances of Les Miserables, Jack and the Beanstalk, An Inspector Calls and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), performed at Qatar National Theatre and the Black Box Theater, were well received.
The Peninsula
