The Real Inspector Hound
&
Black Comedy

Company: Queensland Theatre Company

Venue: Cremorne Theatre, QPAC

Dates: Feb 9 - Mar 13, 2004

Bookings:
www.qtix.com.au

QTC sees the light

Comedy is a difficult art at the best of times; and when you have only a limited time to get your laughs, it can be even more difficult. Luckily, the QTC’s season opening double bill brings together two short, sharp comedies from masters of the form in Tom Stoppard and Peter Schaffer. In their hands, nothing seems simpler than great comedy.

The show opens with Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound, a spoof on British Agatha-Christie-style parlour mysteries. While that would have been enough for a lesser writer, he then weaves in a play-within-the play involving two pompous theatre critics watching the farce unfold. This of course brought much delight to the theatre critics who attended the show!

After interval, it’s Schaffer’s Black Comedy; a surprisingly insightful (pardon the pun) comedy about a young artist whose efforts to woo an important collector and his fiancee’s father are severely disrupted by a blackout in his London flat.

The two complement each other, in that The Real Inspector Hound is the slighter but cleverer of the two, while Black Comedy is the more substantial but funnier. Inspector Hound is very much set in the world of the genteel yet absurd; while Black Comedy is almost Pythonesque in its manic and very physical comedy

The contrast between the two is accentuated by having the cast members (generally) play very different characters in each segment. Hayden Spencer, probably the best comic actor in Queensland at the moment, is one of the snooty critics in The Real Inspector Hound, but plays Brindsley, the hopeful sculptor in Black Comedy with tremendous energy.

Black Comedy uses a technique called “Chinese lighting”, where darkness represents light, and light represents total darkness. The play starts in total blackness, with Brindsley and his fiancee Carol discussing the upcoming evening (including how ravishing she looks in yellow). When the blackout hits, the stage is bathed in light, but the characters must act as though they’re in total darkness. This is a little disorienting at first, but the play soon settles into a nice rhythm; even if there were occasional slips by the lighting crew on the evening.

The cast (from the QTC’s “core” actors for 2004) includes veterans Carol Burns and David Clendinning, with the talented Spencer ably assisted by Melinda Butel, Daniel Murphy (hilarious as a self-righteous critic and a foppish neighbour), Joss McWilliam, Lucas Stibberd and Rebecca Murphy, who really comes into her own as Carol in Black Comedy. While the range of British (and other) accents is demanding, most coped admirably with the task.

QTC artistic director Michael Gow has created a sparkling opening to the 2004 season. These two plays are wonderful foils for each other. Both give audiences plenty of reason to laugh out loud; and there’s enough salient points raised by them to give pause for thought. What more could you ask from an evening at the theatre?

David Edwards

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