Under the Blacklight

As crotchety Anne tells her bumbling assistant Jennifer in Nick Moran’s Under the Blacklight, the stage manager’s realm is amongst the ‘ghosts of dead ambition and infinite amounts of black gaffer tape’. Jennifer trained as a dancer (of course), hoping for her place in the limelight, but ended up behind the scenes instead. And it turns out that, despite her seeming realism, Anne speaks from experience, because she also craved the limelight at one time…This two-hander starts off feeling amusingly familiar, self-consciously poking fun at an eternal divide between the two sides of the theatrical curtain. Samantha Baines is hilarious as the jaded Anne. Baines presents Anne’s obsessive-compulsive ordering of her props room, authority complex, eccentricity and malevolent attitude to any intruder with flair. And we might understand why she feels malevolent towards Lara Money’s overtly saccharine Jennifer, whose voice is almost as squeaky as the rubber chicken on the prop shelf. Jennifer is just the kind of nicely-nicely work experience student that would get on one’s nerves. The two play off each other well, and both actors’ comic timing is often sharp. It becomes clear, though, that Jennifer is not merely a work experience student. When Anne loses her job, Jennifer takes on her role as head stage manager. But, with the loss of Anne, backstage has lost its driving force, and Jennifer plummets to somewhat crazed depths. At this point, the play starts to take an odd turn. Things get a bit awkward (rather than funnier) as we see Jennifer pacing the props room alone. She has resorted to talking to a doll of Anne for support. By the fairly clichéd denouement, it feels like what began as a humorous, well-observed play has lost a little punch. Saying that, Under the Blacklight is an enjoyable half hour, and is worth a look.