Star rating *** There's been a film-based theme developing throughout Oran Mor's current A Play, A Pie and a Pint season of lunchtime plays.
Following references to It's A Wonderful Life, Annie and Godzilla, Oliver Emanuel's new piece opens with a late night deconstruction of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. This comes from the un-named woman who wakes up on a Saturday morning to end all Saturdays beside her equally nameless, not to say restless, boyfriend.
As the pair skirt around each other in criss-crossing monologues that never actually connect up long enough for real life conversation, the private movies each party lives through sees both quietly fast forward away from each other.
It's serendipitous that Emanuel's play arrives the same week as Tennessee Williams prepares to swamp this year's Glasgay! programme, because Williams's influence is all over Videotape, from the woman's gradual fading into the ether a la Talk To Me like The Rain And Let Me Listen, to the way she haunts her boyfriend in his final speech which so resembles the closing moments of The Glass Menagerie.
Even with the 21st century domestic setting and the video backdrop in Joe Douglas's production, however, this remains a play for voices that would have a far more mesmeric effect on radio.
That's not to say there isn't some good writing illustrating what's an often beguiling set-up here, especially as performed by Sam Young as She and Robert Jack as He with an all too recogniseable emotional cross-current of steely vulnerability.
It's about two scenes too long, and there are unresolved hints of apparent domestic violence, but there's enough substance to suggest a life beyond straight-to-video fare.
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