Black Comedy is a one-act farce by Peter Shaffer, first performed in 1965. The premise of the piece is that light and dark are transposed, so that when the stage is lit the cast are supposed to be in darkness and only when the stage is dark are they supposed to be able to see each other and their surroundings. A young sculptor and his fiancée have borrowed some expensive antique furniture from a neighbour's flat without his permission to impress an elderly millionaire art collector. When the power fails, the neighbour returns early, other people also arrive unexpectedly, and matters descend into near-chaos. Background and first production In the early spring of 1965, Kenneth Tynan, dramaturge of the National Theatre, commissioned Shaffer to write a one-act play to accompany a production of Miss Julie starring Maggie Smith and Albert Finney. Shaffer later wrote in the introduction to his 1982 Collected Plays: Shaffer set about composing the play. To produce a more sustaining dramatic premise than the mere gimmick of inverse lighting, Shaffer devised the notion that one of the characters had a reason to actually keep the others in the dark. It was from this necessity that the idea of the stolen furniture was conceived, and the theme of lies was solidified. Brindsley would keep his guests in the dark – both figuratively and literally. Tynan later said of the rehearsal process, "This was farce rehearsed in farce conditions." Owing to scheduling difficulties at Chichester, Black Comedy was given very little rehearsal time, and it opened without a single public preview. The play was directed by John Dexter – who had directed Shaffer's previous play The Royal Hunt of the Sun, and later directed Equus – with what Shaffer called "blazing precision." He added that "it was acted with unmatchable brio by Smith and Finney, by Derek Jacobi as an incomparable Brindsley, and by Graham Crowden as a savagely lunatic Colonel Melkett". Smith had previously starred in two of Shaffer's previous plays, The Private Ear and The Public Eye, which were performed as a double bill at the Globe Theatre. The play is written to be staged under a reversed lighting scheme: the play opens on a darkened stage. A few minutes into the action there is a short circuit, and the stage is illuminated to reveal the characters in a "blackout". On the few occasions when matches, lighters,