By Umer Nangiana
It is community theatre at its very best. If you have never read a Peter Shaffer comedy before, you would surely have fallen in love with his work after seeing Doha Players (DP) perform his Black Comedy here recently.
It sure was fun time watching this vividly written situation comedy by Shaffer, which was pulled off brilliantly by the cast directed by Kathy Searcy. It is a small-cast 8-member-show but it demanded no less work and attention from both the director and the cast as a play with much more characters.
Shaffer’s script appoints each character with some unique traits that are witty yet not so easy to execute. Almost all of the cast members are required to move in the dark as the apartment building experiences an electric fuse.
The lead characters of Brindsley Miller (Sam Cole), Carol Melkett (Rowan Denny), Colonel Melkett (Gary Mond), Miss Furnival (Samantha McGill) and Harold Gorringe (Christopher Chruchouse) had an even tougher task at hand — switching between light and dark multiple times, which required sudden change of expressions and body language.
For almost every member of the cast this was the first comedy experience. Once the curtains roll, you know that the job they have done is superb. The play was staged at Black Box Theatre in Hamad Bin Khalifa University from October 16 to 25.
Community engaged the play’s director Kathy and some members of the cast in a conversation about their experiences working on the play after one of the shows.
“It was great fun. I had a great cast. It was fun rehearsing it. We did an awful lot of playing around with the things, moving around in dark, saying how we do it naturally to make it look as natural as possible, trying to make it fun,” Kathy, the director, told us. She directed a number of plays in Netherlands where she used to live before moving to Doha.
“It is like a dance. A dance to make sure that the people are exactly in the right position at the right time,” she explained the directorial process. Why did she select Black Comedy? “It has made me laugh. I know a lot of plays I read and I would quite often smile, this one made me laugh out loud and I said yes this is the play,” replied Kathy.
Shaffer, she said, is a very well-known and talented writer. First performed in 1965 in London, the stage is set in the darkness of a London apartment after an electric fuse has blown. 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 off stage, the actors have to act as if there is normal lightning. But when the lights are on stage, they have to act as if it is complete darkness.
What follows is a frantic romp with unexpected visitors, mistaken identities, and surprises lurking in every dark corner.
How was the experience working with this cast?
“Terrible. (Everyone laughs). No, I mean they worked very well with me. They would listen to me. They were trying to do everything that I suggested. We would hit a wall and people would throw other ideas and they would try that so I felt it was a very collaborative process,” said Kathy.
The young protagonists, Brindsley Miller and Carol Melkett, have the most stage-presence and most challenging tasks to perform and they were performed by Sam Cole and Rowan Denny respectively with amazing ease.
Neither overacted at any point and both of them were exceptionally good in executing the physical tasks, like preparing drinks in the dark and moving furniture out of the apartment without making noise in the dark.
It was Cole’s first-ever performance with the Doha Players. “It has been a pleasure to be a part of this. I have [performed] a lot of theatre in the UK as a student in the university which was tremendous experience but it was such a pleasure to be welcomed in the community of the Doha Players,” says Cole.
He was not familiar with Shaffer before deciding to audition for the play. “I looked up everything I could on Peter Shaffer before the audition so when I came to read the play, I fell in love with the character,” says the leading actor. Brindsley, he says, is a real challenge because you don’t know if you want to get the audience to sympathise with him because he is having such a terrible night or you want the audience to sympathise more with Carol and the Colonel because of the fact that he is with Clea.
“It provided a lot of challenge to me and I have tried to bring out as much comedy as I could and not worry so much about the serious stuff,” said Cole.
He found the physical movements to be most challenging. And it took a lot of input from everyone to help him and others master the expression of walking and moving as if in darkness.
“We would rehearse in the dark. We would actually run in the dark a few times which was a lot fun. You kind of just internalise what it feels like in the actual dark and then when the time comes to do it, you kind of just have that in the back of the brain,” Denny (Carol) chipped in.
It was her fifth play with Doha Players and she has also done some theatre in in university and gotten professional training. She said this role was very different from her previous ones.
“It was a lot more girly (laughs). This kind of debutant, socialite role I have not really done before it. I have had to get a bit of British accent for it as well and then playing in the dark was definitely a new challenge. It was really fun but definitely a challenge to kind of feel that movement and that awareness,” said Denny.
One of the most charming characters in the play is Harold Gorringe, Cole’s fussy neighbour, masterfully performed by perhaps the most experienced of the cast, Christopher Churchouse. He is simply perfect. Comedy appears to have come to him naturally but this was his first time.
“I have done many plays. I am actually trained as an actor in Australia and I have worked a number of years professionally in theatre before I came to Doha. I have done a lot of community theatre, both plays and musical. I have not done a lot of comedy. So [it was a challenge for me] to learn the timing that is required to make it sort of funny to the audience but real,” said Churchouse.
The process, he said, was fantastic. “It has been like an ensemble work, with all working together to choreograph where people had to be at a specific moment. It was actually fun time. The rehearsal time went by very quickly. It has been a great journey,” he added.
Clea, Cole’s girlfriend who suddenly returns to spoil his moment, was played by Gemma Robinson brilliantly and with the same confidence that the character demands.
She said she auditioned for both Clea and Carol. “Clea is the character that I would have hoped to have played. I loved everything about her, the way she is. I think it was a real challenge and a good character to play,” said Gemma. At first, moving in dark looked difficult but she says the director let them do a lot of exercises. “We blended [being in dark and light] together, so eventually when it came to acting it was a very natural process.”
Gary Mond played Colonel Melkett. After seeing him perform you get the impression he has been a retired military officer, such was his command on the character.
“No, I have never been in an army (laughs). I think one of the things that we have all worked in the rehearsals is to try to get into character, visualise the character. Right from Day 1, Kathy asked us to sort of try and picture and design the character and I just came up with that voice and then the character built from there really,” he said, explaining his shouting and other powerful gestures.
Ousama Itani plays Schuppanzigh, the man from the electric company who arrives late to fix the fuse.
“The German accent was quite a challenge for me. My accent is pretty American by default and I have been used to doing British accents in theatre but never German. But it grew over time. The more you get into it, the more natural it gets,” said Ousama about his German-accented English in the play. It was his fourth main stage production with Doha Players and he is hoping to get more roles in future as well.