DARKNESS and light could be the underlying themes in these two one-act plays being presented as part of the Peter Shaffer Celebration at this year’s Chichester Festival Theatre season.

Farce and tragedy, two shades perhaps of the same human state, are another good description for works that were first staged together in 1965 at Chichester.

Shaffer, already one of the nation’s most celebrated play-wrights, was commissioned to write Black Comedy to contrast with the staging then of August Strindberg’s tragic tale of passion between the classes in a grand European house written in 1888, Miss Julie.

And the contrast is stark. Miss Julie, played by the superb Rosalie Craig, is enamoured of her father’s valet Jean. Leaving the servants’ midsummer dance, she follows Jean, played by Shaun Evans, into the kitchen. Inevitably the two are drawn together in a dance of their own that will have dangerous, perhaps fatal consequences. And as the warm summer darkness of night gives way to sunlight, the result of their encounter becomes stark reality.

For Black Comedy, however, the clash of cultures, classes and amorous encounters is set in a 1960s riotous farce. The lights have fused at the down-atheel flat of down-at-heel sculptor Brindsley Miller, played acrobatically by Paul Ready.

It was to be a big night. Not only did he need to impress his new fiancée’s strict father but also an eccentric German millionaire who was dropping by to view his creations.

Include a camp neighbour, the arrival of a slightly batty old dear from next door, played by the wonderful Marcia Warren, a former lover and not one but two eccentric Germans, and when the lights flicker on and off the mayhem grows ever more chaotic.

Shaffer’s creation is pure farce with the glorious twist that the audience can see all, the actors nothing. The settings for both productions are superb, the Count’s kitchen for Miss Julie transformed during the interval into a shabby South Kensington maisonette.

With both productions, inevitably, success hinges on shades of dark and light. Full marks then to the Minerva’s technicians for such illuminating work.

Miss Julie and Black Comedy run until August 9.