The Alley Theatre’s long-running Summer Chills series concludes for the season with Black Comedy, Peter Shaffer’s slapstick farce in which the roles of light and dark are reversed. When the stage is lit and visible to the audience, to the characters, the scene is actually darkened because of an electrical blackout, and vice versa. Got it? The show, first produced in 1965, centers on a starving artist and his fiancée, who “borrow” expensive furniture from an out-of-town neighbor in order to impress her father, who is coming over for a dinner party. In the dark-to-the-characters, light-to-the-audience scenes, the characters reveal their dirty little secrets. Then, according to the Alley, “mistaken identities, physical comedy and general mayhem” abound. Sounds like Three’s Company territory to us. 2:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. today. Show runs through August 6.
July 21-Aug. 6
This article appears in Jul 20-26, 2006.
