The Queen’s Black Nightmare, Mom and Dad Productions, at the Viaduct Theater. In all three one-acts on this program, the worst thing that can happen to a character inevitably does. In Peter Shaffer’s 1965 Black Comedy, a struggling sculptor steals the furniture of his finicky gay neighbor in order to impress his fiancee’s father and a potential patron. Not only does the apartment building have a blackout–represented by a brightly lit stage (when the lights are on, the stage is dark)–but the neighbor comes back and the sculptor must secretly return the furniture in the dark. In ensemble member Michelle Zee’s Kleptopatra: Queen of the Shoplifters, a fashionista who regularly shoplifts items worth thousands of dollars is wrongfully arrested for stealing a $7 pair of underwear. And in Christopher Durang’s The Actor’s Nightmare, an accountant is trapped onstage and must perform crucial roles in several classics without knowing any of his lines.
