The moment when the chorus sings "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light" is a highlight of Haydn's oratorio The Creation. Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy adds a neat twist to the line. The opening ten minutes are played in pitch-blackness, as Brindsley (Greg Haiste) and his debutante girlfriend Carol (Ellie Beaven) prepare for the arrival of German millionaire Bamberger (Will Barton) as if the lights were on normally. Brindsley is a cutting-edge sculptor, and Bamberger is a collector with a chequebook hopefully at the ready.

Then a fuse blows. The stage lighting comes on full blast, to reveal that Brindsley has stolen some choice pieces of furniture from his neighbour's flat, to impress the millionaire. The neighbour, the intensely gay Harold (Jamie Newall), returns unexpectedly, so his possessions have to be returned pronto - in the dark. We, of course, see Brindsley's increasingly frantic efforts to put matters right before power is restored. Symbolically, Brindsley gets tangled up in telephone cables and electric flexes, as his duplicity becomes ever clearer - he has also lied to his girlfriend Carol about the dumping of her predecessor Clea (Rachael Spence), who inevitably turns up at just the wrong moment. Into the mix, too, comes another neighbour, Miss Furnival (Claire Vousden), a lifelong teetotaller who enthusiastically takes to the bottle when she accidentally samples gin instead of lime juice in the dark, Carol's peppery, retired-Colonel father (Robin Bowerman), and the decidedly weird Schuppanzigh (David Peart) from the electricity board.

All this is farce at its best, and in this Watermill production Orla O'Loughlin directs the ensemble cast with aplomb, and spot-on timing. No great depths of characterisation are called for, and all three girls are game for a bit of overacting - but who can blame Carol, in particular, for going a trifle over the top when her daddy insists on calling her "Dumpy Poo"?

The evening begins with a stage recreation of The Bowmans, a Hancock's Half Hour send-up of The Archers. Tony Hancock himself played the part of Old Joshua Merryweather, a character quite plainly based on Walter Gabriel, right down to the use of Gabriel's stock greeting: "Well me old pal, me old beauties". Merryweather has been playing fast and loose with the script, so he is unceremoniously sacked. Although he hasn't the depressed-spaniel look of the original, Will Barton plays Hancock with obvious affection, and catches the undercurrent of resentment always present in Hancock's voice. As an ex-BBC employee, I particularly enjoyed David Peart's producer: too cowardly to sack Merryweather face-to-face, he leaves him to discover his own death when he reads next week's script.