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The White Liars, and Black Comedy: Two One Act Plays
The White Liars depicts a fateful encounter between a down-and-out fortune teller, a rock musician, and his agent. The agent bribes Baroness Lemberg to fake some hocus-pocus over a crystal ball, ostensibly to discourage the musician from pursuing his girlfriend. The trickery entangles each of them in a dense web of mendacity.
Black Comedy: The fussy neighbor, Harold Gorringe, returns just as a blown fuse plunges the apartment into darkness and Brindsley is revealed. Unexpected guests, aging spinsters, errant phone cords, and other snares impede his frantic attempts to return the purloined items before light is restored.
Black Comedy: The fussy neighbor, Harold Gorringe, returns just as a blown fuse plunges the apartment into darkness and Brindsley is revealed. Unexpected guests, aging spinsters, errant phone cords, and other snares impede his frantic attempts to return the purloined items before light is restored.
106 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1968
2 people are currently reading
64 people want to read
About the author
Peter Shaffer
70 books181 followersSir Peter Levin Shaffer was an English dramatist, author of numerous award-winning plays, several of which have been filmed.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sh...
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sh...
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 9, 2024
The White Liars
3.5/5
Though this show had only three characters, each one is strongly written and complex. Full of some really interesting twists. Also, it makes for good monologue fodder—characters will talk for pages at a time. Minus one star for two instances of racist language, which could so easily have been cut.
Black Comedy
4/5
What. A. Hoot. It’s less impactful to read than it probably would be to watch them, but nonetheless I had a blast reading this. I’ve realized that one of my favorite genres is “house party gone wrong” (a la Clue, Rumors, etc.). Maybe that’s just what a farce is but IDunnoTheGenreDoesn’tReallyMakeSenseToMeAnyways.
Other thoughts:
• With the amount of physicality needed from the leads and the attention to detail in the set, this show would shine best with a good technical director.
• Also, probably an intimacy coordinator, too. If this show had less innuendo, I’d so want CTC to perform this.
• Carol was so wronged.
• I so want to play Clea.
• White millennial moms should stop making up new names and start calling their kids Brindsley.
Both The White Liars and Black Comedy were written to be performed together, with White Liars first and Black Comedy Second. They’re both farces that tackle lies, self-deception, and messy relationships. Since they’re more tied in theme than in content, both stand independently; they don’t really need to be bundled together like they always are.
3.5/5
Though this show had only three characters, each one is strongly written and complex. Full of some really interesting twists. Also, it makes for good monologue fodder—characters will talk for pages at a time. Minus one star for two instances of racist language, which could so easily have been cut.
Black Comedy
4/5
What. A. Hoot. It’s less impactful to read than it probably would be to watch them, but nonetheless I had a blast reading this. I’ve realized that one of my favorite genres is “house party gone wrong” (a la Clue, Rumors, etc.). Maybe that’s just what a farce is but IDunnoTheGenreDoesn’tReallyMakeSenseToMeAnyways.
Other thoughts:
• With the amount of physicality needed from the leads and the attention to detail in the set, this show would shine best with a good technical director.
• Also, probably an intimacy coordinator, too. If this show had less innuendo, I’d so want CTC to perform this.
• Carol was so wronged.
• I so want to play Clea.
• White millennial moms should stop making up new names and start calling their kids Brindsley.
Both The White Liars and Black Comedy were written to be performed together, with White Liars first and Black Comedy Second. They’re both farces that tackle lies, self-deception, and messy relationships. Since they’re more tied in theme than in content, both stand independently; they don’t really need to be bundled together like they always are.
November 17, 2024
I bought this ages ago and finally read it.
I liked White Lies, just fine. The story itself, I'm not crazy about; perhaps just a bit dull in the end, but it was a pleasant enough read.
Black Comedy wasn't bad, but I felt it was a bit farcical for my taste. The tumbling over furniture and the overprotective father, the spraying with vodka (no one would mistake a blast of that in the face for water...) just ended up a bit silly. Which I do think was the point... I thought the lighting swap was a clever idea although it doesn't much account for ones eyes becoming accustomed to darkness.
I liked White Lies, just fine. The story itself, I'm not crazy about; perhaps just a bit dull in the end, but it was a pleasant enough read.
Black Comedy wasn't bad, but I felt it was a bit farcical for my taste. The tumbling over furniture and the overprotective father, the spraying with vodka (no one would mistake a blast of that in the face for water...) just ended up a bit silly. Which I do think was the point... I thought the lighting swap was a clever idea although it doesn't much account for ones eyes becoming accustomed to darkness.
May 25, 2016
I keep looking for some connection between Peter Shaffer's two plays, Black Comedy and White Lies, but as far as I can tell, there really is none. They just sound like complementary works because of their titles. Good enough.
White Lies is the serious one. It depicts a band manager's vindictive—yet creative—way of warning his young musical protege to stay away from his sort-of girlfriend. He conspires with a fortune teller to look into the young man's future and warn him about the dire consequences if he remains with this girl. I preferred this play to the other. It's short and to the point. It offers a nice commentary about how small lies can add up and negatively affect a person's life. It also avoids the stereotypical fortune teller who sounds crazy but ends up being correct (looking at you, Tales From the Crypt). She does eventually seem to predict this band manager's future based on his selfish and petty actions, but I imagine most of the readers/viewers could do that as well by the end of the story.
Black Comedy is a wild farce that never takes itself seriously. It latches onto the tropes of the genre (mistaken identities, characters showing up unexpectedly) and uses them to its advantage. As funny as the play is, it's its creative use of lighting that really sets it apart. When the lights go out in the fictional world of the characters, they come on in the theater, so audiences see the characters stumbling around as if in the dark. The only problem I had with the play is that it ends rather abruptly without any kind of resolution. Normally, I'm all for ambiguity in an ending, but when the play is this silly, I'd rather see everything wrapped up in a nice little package at the end.
White Lies is the serious one. It depicts a band manager's vindictive—yet creative—way of warning his young musical protege to stay away from his sort-of girlfriend. He conspires with a fortune teller to look into the young man's future and warn him about the dire consequences if he remains with this girl. I preferred this play to the other. It's short and to the point. It offers a nice commentary about how small lies can add up and negatively affect a person's life. It also avoids the stereotypical fortune teller who sounds crazy but ends up being correct (looking at you, Tales From the Crypt). She does eventually seem to predict this band manager's future based on his selfish and petty actions, but I imagine most of the readers/viewers could do that as well by the end of the story.
Black Comedy is a wild farce that never takes itself seriously. It latches onto the tropes of the genre (mistaken identities, characters showing up unexpectedly) and uses them to its advantage. As funny as the play is, it's its creative use of lighting that really sets it apart. When the lights go out in the fictional world of the characters, they come on in the theater, so audiences see the characters stumbling around as if in the dark. The only problem I had with the play is that it ends rather abruptly without any kind of resolution. Normally, I'm all for ambiguity in an ending, but when the play is this silly, I'd rather see everything wrapped up in a nice little package at the end.
November 11, 2022
I remember reading these plays years ago and thinking them rather delightful, but after having seen them on stage, my main impression was that they both outstay their welcome.
This is particularly true of Black Comedy, which is built around a clever conceit, viz., during a power failure, the stage is fully lit and we can see everything, but the characters cannot. The problem with this—especially for those of us who have ever lived through a blackout--is that after ten or fifteen minutes, one's eyes become accustomed to darkness, even pitch darkness; the sight of these people flailing blindly, unable to even tell where one another are standing, comes off as forced and foolish. The implausibility is only compounded by the careful avoidance of furniture and other obstacles by all of the characters--these folks, apparently unable to see a thing, never once bump into the furniture or knock over one of their frequent cocktails.
Black Comedy takes more than an hour to tell its standard-issue story of a young artist who has invited a rich collector to his flat to view his work on the very same night that his hoity-toity fiancee plans to introduce him to her fussbudget-y conservative father. Complications ensue: Brindsley, the young man, has "borrowed" furniture and art objects from his antique dealer neighbor Harold, in hopes of impressing the collector; naturally Harold turns up unexpectedly. So does Clea, Brindsley's former girlfriend, who flits around the dark apartment a la Elvira in Blithe Spirit, wreaking rather gratuitous havoc on her ex's already catastrophic evening. And of course, the lights go out.
Cliches and duration aside, Black Comedy offers some nice opportunities for its cast to show their comic chops.
The White Liars, which precedes Black Comedy on the bill, is set in a resort on the English Channel during off-season, where a budding rock star and his manager turn up at a fortune teller's parlor. She bills herself as a Sophie, Baroness of the Holy Roman Empire (which ought to seem suspicious to anyone who remembers that the Congress of Vienna was in 1815). But her visitors are no less phony, though it's not entirely clear how, or why, they're fibbing to Sophie; indeed, as in Black Comedy, plausibility and consistency are serious problems that undermine Shaffer's ingenuity: the events of The White Liars do not stand up to much scrutiny. But they're funny, especially if delivered by a fine cast of comic actors.
This is particularly true of Black Comedy, which is built around a clever conceit, viz., during a power failure, the stage is fully lit and we can see everything, but the characters cannot. The problem with this—especially for those of us who have ever lived through a blackout--is that after ten or fifteen minutes, one's eyes become accustomed to darkness, even pitch darkness; the sight of these people flailing blindly, unable to even tell where one another are standing, comes off as forced and foolish. The implausibility is only compounded by the careful avoidance of furniture and other obstacles by all of the characters--these folks, apparently unable to see a thing, never once bump into the furniture or knock over one of their frequent cocktails.
Black Comedy takes more than an hour to tell its standard-issue story of a young artist who has invited a rich collector to his flat to view his work on the very same night that his hoity-toity fiancee plans to introduce him to her fussbudget-y conservative father. Complications ensue: Brindsley, the young man, has "borrowed" furniture and art objects from his antique dealer neighbor Harold, in hopes of impressing the collector; naturally Harold turns up unexpectedly. So does Clea, Brindsley's former girlfriend, who flits around the dark apartment a la Elvira in Blithe Spirit, wreaking rather gratuitous havoc on her ex's already catastrophic evening. And of course, the lights go out.
Cliches and duration aside, Black Comedy offers some nice opportunities for its cast to show their comic chops.
The White Liars, which precedes Black Comedy on the bill, is set in a resort on the English Channel during off-season, where a budding rock star and his manager turn up at a fortune teller's parlor. She bills herself as a Sophie, Baroness of the Holy Roman Empire (which ought to seem suspicious to anyone who remembers that the Congress of Vienna was in 1815). But her visitors are no less phony, though it's not entirely clear how, or why, they're fibbing to Sophie; indeed, as in Black Comedy, plausibility and consistency are serious problems that undermine Shaffer's ingenuity: the events of The White Liars do not stand up to much scrutiny. But they're funny, especially if delivered by a fine cast of comic actors.
July 6, 2017
meh... it was okay. They were a few laughs but mostly it was just daily common banter. The best part of the writing is the fact that the titles are puns for the stories.
I wouldn't rush out and read them or seem them.
I wouldn't rush out and read them or seem them.
March 2, 2025
The White Liars is dull as dishwater, but Black Comedy is a farcical masterpiece.
May 6, 2016
The White Liars - 3 stars. Interesting to use female character's inner thoughts so audience can know what she's thinking but would work better in live performance rather than reading it..
Black Comedy - 4 - Very clever and original concept though dated dialogue from 60s, Maggie Smith as Clea would have been fun to watch... enjoyed it more than White Liars, the concept that there is a blackout caused by a fuse that burns out but, when the lights go out in the characters' world, the lights go on on stage and they have to act as though they are in the pitch black darkness. And vice versa so, when the lights are on in the their world at the start of the play, they act in literal blackness on stage as though there was light - audience has to rely on dialogue in darkness to understand what's going on for the first 5 pages. Another clever touch is, when a character lights a lighter/match/flashlight, the lights on stage dim to represent a sudden flash of light for characters so they act accordingly... Contains some classic farce must-haves which, at times, are predictable if you've seen/read many farces (mistaken identities, hidden lover in bedroom, etc) ... Only annoying character to me was Carol.... her turns of phrase were annoying, adding "ipegs" to the end of certain words i.e. instead of Gods, she says Godipegs.. or cutipegs - not sure what the point of that was except to be annoying...
Black Comedy - 4 - Very clever and original concept though dated dialogue from 60s, Maggie Smith as Clea would have been fun to watch... enjoyed it more than White Liars, the concept that there is a blackout caused by a fuse that burns out but, when the lights go out in the characters' world, the lights go on on stage and they have to act as though they are in the pitch black darkness. And vice versa so, when the lights are on in the their world at the start of the play, they act in literal blackness on stage as though there was light - audience has to rely on dialogue in darkness to understand what's going on for the first 5 pages. Another clever touch is, when a character lights a lighter/match/flashlight, the lights on stage dim to represent a sudden flash of light for characters so they act accordingly... Contains some classic farce must-haves which, at times, are predictable if you've seen/read many farces (mistaken identities, hidden lover in bedroom, etc) ... Only annoying character to me was Carol.... her turns of phrase were annoying, adding "ipegs" to the end of certain words i.e. instead of Gods, she says Godipegs.. or cutipegs - not sure what the point of that was except to be annoying...
November 6, 2021
White Liars, the story of a complicated love triangle and a depressed fortune teller, is interesting and well-paced but not worth 5 stars on its own. Black Comedy, however, is absolutely brilliant. It's a class-conscious comedy of manners and mistaken identity framed by a clever lighting trick and bursting with physical comedy opportunities. Even the character descriptions are amusing, from Miss Furnival -- "her hair in a bun, her voice in a bun" -- to Carol, who speaks in "that unmistakable, terrifying debutante quack." I would love to see this one performed, especially back in the 60s when Derek Jacobi starred in it. Farcical gold.
October 31, 2021
Black Comedy is one of my favorite comedies - I had the good fortune to act in a production in Summer Stock in Geneva, New York back in 1978. On paper, it's not easy to get all the humor that is happening in the play. It is a visual comedy, where the actors start off on a blacked out stage, although they are 'playing' they are in the light. Then, a fuse blows, and the houselights go up, while the actors play they're in the dark. Get it?? It's gimmicky, but a lot of fun. As for The White Liars, I have no affinity for this play, not getting it's point.
September 11, 2013
Upon further inspection, I think my copy (which bears the title "Black Comedy and White Lies") was actually published before Shaffer made serious revisions to the latter play, including the change of title to "The White Liars." But until I get a more currently publish copy to compare, I'll log this one.
Delightfully funny little pieces, though Amadeus will forever remain my favorite.
Delightfully funny little pieces, though Amadeus will forever remain my favorite.
January 26, 2012
Students did this as a play. The comedy is very dark (hence the title) and often cheesy, but it is a fun read.
September 22, 2012
For White Lies: 3.5-4 stars. A nice little read. "The way I see it, the world's made-up of images - images talking at images...."
August 22, 2013
The White Liars is an oddity that I'm glad exists but don't care to read again. Black Comedy is a rather clever farce with an terribly clever gimmick that I like to re-read every few years.
June 18, 2016
I enjoyed White Lies. Black Comedy was stupid.
May 26, 2019
I didn't love The White Liars. Everyone was telling a lie, so that was to be expected. It's listed by Samuel French as a comedy, but I didn't see anything funny about it.
Black Comedy has some icky 1960s ask-my-daughter-for-permission-and-maybe-I'll-approve nonsense, but other than that it is SO FUNNY. The power goes out the night an artist has invited a millionaire art collector AND his fiancee's military father arrive. Why on the same night are two such different people invited, I don't know other than the play is a farce. The artist and his fiancee have also stolen furniture and art from his neighbor in the next apartment to look more upper class. Then, a fuse is blown and every one is in the dark. HILARIOUS!
Black Comedy has some icky 1960s ask-my-daughter-for-permission-and-maybe-I'll-approve nonsense, but other than that it is SO FUNNY. The power goes out the night an artist has invited a millionaire art collector AND his fiancee's military father arrive. Why on the same night are two such different people invited, I don't know other than the play is a farce. The artist and his fiancee have also stolen furniture and art from his neighbor in the next apartment to look more upper class. Then, a fuse is blown and every one is in the dark. HILARIOUS!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews