An incredibly funny look into the marriage of two deeply deluded humans.
An ordinary couple return home from a work dinner and begin the familiar rituals of settling in for the evening. Their shoes come off, their belongings are put away, and the night appears unremarkable if tense. An intruder is lurking in the darkness. When a sudden power outage plunges the characters into total darkness, the things they have been concealing begin to surface. The irony, of course, is that while everyone is unable to see, the intruder can hear everything discussed and knows considerably more than either of them.
What Happens in the Dark is a commendable farce that uses its central conceit to explore the extraordinary lengths people will go to construct and maintain lives that are fundamentally at odds with their most authentic selves. Beneath the comedy is a sharper critique of bi-erasure and the compromises people make to conform to expectations. The play also offers an insightful, if uncomfortable, look at the lengths schoolteachers can be forced to go to simply to survive professionally and socially.
The production’s most impressive feature is its inventive use of lighting. The blackout becomes more than a technical effect; it is an active dramatic device. The audience is given access to what the characters cannot see, creating an enjoyable tension as we watch information accumulate while the characters remain frustratingly, and sometimes hilariously, unaware. It is a clever theatrical convention that makes the audience complicit in the deception.
That conceit does, however, come with its limitations. Because the characters cannot make eye contact, there are moments when the physical connection between dialogue and intention becomes somewhat muddled. Emotional vulnerability is often most powerful when it can be communicated through a glance, a hesitation, or the smallest shift in expression, and the darkness necessarily robs the performers of some of those tools. At times, this creates a physical disconnect between what a character is saying and what they appear to mean.
Fortunately, the sheer energy of the cast compensates for much of this. This is an exhausting show to watch in the best possible sense with intense physicality and demanding fight choreography keeping the production in constant motion. There were a few noticeable mishaps, particularly in the fight sequences, where several moments failed to land with the intended force or clarity. Given that the audience surrounds the action on three sides, this is an understandable challenge, but the choreography could benefit from some additional tightening and rehearsal.
Despite these minor shortcomings, What Happens in the Dark succeeds because it understands that farce can be both entertaining and incisive. It is funny, energetic, occasionally cringe-inducing, and ultimately rather revealing about the stories we tell ourselves to avoid confronting who we really are.
Show Listing: https://www.edfringe.com/
LISTINGS INFORMATION
Venue: TheSpace Niddry Street – Lower Theatre & Upper Theatre
Dates: Aug 7th -28th (exl. 16h, 23rd)
Time: 23:35 (60 mins) & 22:20
Ticket prices: £17.50 / Concessions £15.50 / Student £14.50 / Unemployed £14.50
Fringe box office: 0131 226 0000 / www.edfringe.com
Suitable for 14+