Black Comedy Essay

If there is one style of theatre that allows playwrights a chance to make a strong statement on
society, it’s Black comedy. It is an intriguing style of performance as it allows audiences to release
emotions on issues that are taboo or of a dark nature, that would be otherwise be impermissible
outside of its realm. Black Comedy first appeared on stages in the 1950s and had mixed responses
with audiences due to the cathartic experience it provides as it exploits humour and discomfort in
such a way that applies to us all and internally evokes a sense of serious thought about the moral or
objective ideas that the playwrights aim to push onto their audiences. Black comedy has the ability
to leave lasting and haunting effects on an audience. For me, my experiences of watching Black
Comedy performances at ONSTAGE pushed me to use conventions of Black Comedy in my own
individual performance as it has such an efficiency in reaching out and twisting the way we see the
world and our human nature. The two plays studied, 'The Homecoming' by Harold Pinter and
'Lieutenant of Inishmore' (LOI) by Martin McDonagh, confront the audiences with several political
and social issues that we as a society, try to neglect and avoid, in order to expose ourselves to the
consequences of our everyday behaviours and human faults, leaving everlasting impressions,
making the audience leave feeling changed.

‘The Homecoming' is a play that explores the power around gender dynamics which is achieved as
Pinter manipulates the roles within the domestic sphere and the struggle in the hierarchy of power.
During the 1950s, when Pinter wrote his play, there were significant movements of social change
that were occurring in England and globally in relation to civil rights and second wave feminism as
women were pushing for equality and trying to change the way that they were perceived in society.
This why the setting of 'The Homecoming', being placed in the all-male household is so effective as
the dynamics are distorted when a female is placed in the mix, diverting the roles of gender, power
and logic as the sexual and physical tension boils. Pinter heavily crafts his play around its broken
rhythms- the slow, prolonged moments that make the audience extremely uncomfortable
contrasted with the scenes that are quickly paced due to the anger from arguments. When I first
watched the film version of this play, Pinter's famous pauses of silence crept into my environment,
making me feel extremely uncomfortable due to the tension which was accumulating from the
awkwardness of the silence, which I could only relieve by laughing and cringing. In particular, the
‘Glass of Water’ scene is a powerful moment where Pinter truly subverts the hypermasculine type
cast as Lenny tries to assert his dominance on Ruth as he tells her that he once assaulted a woman,
in hope to belittle her however, Pinter characterises Ruth to resist, blocking the slurs as he neglects
any reaction. Stripped by this sexual aggravation, Lenny needs to reinstate his dominance, a
common pattern that Pinter comments on as being an instinct of men particularly, during this time.
By challenging and confronting the audience with the mixed dynamics of the character
relationships and their body language intensifies the bottled sexual tension which encapsules the
overlooked power of women and challenges the stereotype of women as being meek and
submissive as he implements comments such as ‘If you take the glass, I’ll take you’. It was even
suggested in a review of the play that Pinter’s portrayal of Ruth represents men’s fear and terror of
the powers of female sexuality as she represents the ‘femme-fatale' which is suggested as the men
swooning and dying. Pinter really takes a comment of the hierarchy of power that exists in our
society as he bends the roles and expectations of gender and sexuality in his play. Pinter captures
the way that we, as humans are constantly trying to need to feel empowered and in control, which
he captures through the over-sexualisation of Ruth, ‘You think I’m too old for you.... You’re going to
have to work... you understand.... Do you think she understands what we are getting at?’ to
connote to prostitution, a signal of seeing women as objects rather than as people.
‘Lieutenant of Inishmore’ is an absurdist play that satirises the brutality of humans and magnifies
the ridiculousness of war and violence. This is a highly contextual play as it is based off of ‘The
Troubles’, a time of severe civil unrest and turmoil in Ireland as there was mass acts of terrorism
occurring within the nation. McDonagh’s play hold complete irony as he writes from a position of
pacifist rage, it is a violent play that is wholeheartedly is about anti-violence, ‘rubbing shoulders
with both comedy and tragedy’. This play holds the power of a political critic against the
Warrington bombings in 1993, in which, the IRA detonated 2 bombs that killed and injured several
people. Martin fearlessly wrote this play to inform people of what was happening in Ireland as well
as to demonstrate that the violence and internal conflict that was occurring, was starting to bleed
into the homes of Irish families and was causing a dysfunctionality in society which can be derived
from comments such as ‘You’d have blinded your brother over a dead cat?’. McDonagh confronts
his audience with the extremely grotesque, brutal and absurd tableaus that are seen within the
play, such as a man covered in blood hanging upside-down, a cat’s head hanging on by a vein, a
woman with a gun to a man’s head and etc. Upon watching the recorded version of the stage play I
was left feeling stunned, as McDonagh pushes a very real terror onto his audience, forcing them to
become aware of the brutality of the civil war that was happening at the time, a cruel conflict that
would go unnoticed if it wasn’t for plays like McDonagh’s, awaking us to the suffering caused by the
religious and militant divisions of Ireland. Additionally, as an audience member, watching class
peers perform a scene from this play, I found myself laughing at things like a man's face smothered
in blood and guts of a cat, or the tension between Padriac when he is about to shoot Donny and
Davey in the head, the dramatic pause caused immense suspense and anxiety and to laugh was my
only instinct, but when you realise what it was that you were laughing at, it seems inappropriate.
Yet that is one of the core factors that makes black comedy so effective as it provides a cathartic
experience for the audience to relieve their tension. McDonagh makes a high level of irony for his
audience as Padraic loves Wee Thomas in a way that he is incapable of loving a person; his cat is the
only life that actually matters to him other than his own, which cleverly leaves his audience with a
spark of thought about the care and compassion that exist in all humans.