Black Comedy/White Lies

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Black Comedy/White Lies is a play, comprised of two unrelated acts, by Peter Shaffer.

Black Comedy is the stuff of which British sex comedies are made. It focuses on Brindsley Miller, an opportunistic young sculptor who is facing one of the most important evenings of his life, the night in which he is to meet both the tyrannical father of his debutante fiancee and a millionaire patron of the arts capable of making his career. Just before his guests arrive, a fuse blows, plunging his South Kensington apartment into darkness. What follows is a series of mishaps and embarassments as people fall down stairs, constantly bump into doors and furniture, and mistakenly grope each other. The play's humor hinges on a highly theatrical concept: when the lights are on in Brindsley's flat at the beginning of the piece, the actors are in total darkness; when the lights go out, the stage is then lit, allowing the audience to watch the cast stumble about and fumble as they try to complete the simplest of tasks.

White Lies revolves around Sophie Lemberg, an eccentric and disillusioned fortune teller (who imagines herself to be a baroness of the Holy Roman Empire) living in a decaying seaside resort, and the two young men - Tom, the lead singer in a rock band, and Frank, his business manager - who consult her. It soon becomes clear that their lives are much stranger than the fiction Sophie tries to create in her magic ball.

After 14 previews, the original Broadway production, produced by Alexander H. Cohen and directed by John Dexter, opened on February 12, 1967 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, where it ran for 337 performances. The opening night cast of Black Comedy included Lynn Redgrave and Michael Crawford, both making their Broadway debuts, Geraldine Page, Donald Madden, Camila Ashland, and Jordan Christopher; Crawford, Page, and Madden comprised the cast of White Lies.

In 1993, the play was revived by the Roundabout Theatre Company under the title White Liars/Black Comedy, with White Liars having been rewritten significantly from the original version. The cast included Peter MacNicol, Kate Mulgrew, Keene Curtis, Brian Murray, and Nancy Marchand, who was Tony-nominated as Best Actress in a Play. The production ran for 25 previews and 38 performances.