Paint It Black

I first discovered the intricate performance art that is black light theatre at the annual Morris Hall school eisteddfod. I'd call it a talent display but I don't want to mislead you. For those of you not as culturally advanced as I, black light theatre is where you turn on a UV light and a series of phosphorous objects glide magically across the stage held in place by a series of performers dressed in their best drama blacks. It's basically like using Twilight Zone stickers as a form of theatre.

Now all you cynics might think that isn't enough to sustain one's interest and justify a night at the theatre but we thought the same thing about model trains once and all it took was the great mind of one Andrew Lloyd-Webber to prove us wrong there with the seminal Starlight Express (it hears your distress!).

So as an 8 year old having to sit through all number of tiresome calisthenic (more commonly known as calispastics) routines including endless rod displays to the theme from Gremlins and odd homages to the Seekers, there were only 3 things that got me through these evenings.

1. The hope that they might throw confectionary at the audience. This occurred more often you'd think in the less health conscious 1980's.

2. The promise of catching a glimpse of the grade 4 teacher who looked a lot like Angelica Huston in The Witches. A striking lady, I'll leave it to your fertile imaginations as to whether she resembled her with or without the latex mask and wig.

3. But most of all it was looking forward to the grade 3 teacher's consistently dazzling use of the much maligned art of black light theatre. After sitting through hours of barely co-ordinated girls in unbecoming outfits, I could always rely on the vision of a woman who had clearly found her creativity repressed by Australia's private school system but allowed it to explode across the stage annually. Her breathtaking creations reached a dizzying peak in 1988 as she celebrated our bicentenary (celebration of a nation, give us a hand, celebration of a nation, let's make it grand!) with an assault on the senses that covered everything from the Great Barrier Reef to Lindy Chamberlin. If you didn't think such differing subjects could be covered all at once by a series of pre-pubescent girls with thongs on their hands (and this time I do mean flip flops) then you're sorely underestimating the magic of black light theatre and it's ability to comment on our times.

So that brings us to the present day. The 90's seemed to bury black light theatre or at least relegate it to late night performances at Teriyaki Anarki Saki or window displays at Ministry Of Style. But wandering the streets of Prague, I discovered that it's still very much alive and embraced by the Czech Republic. I guess the communists didn't let them explore it in the 80's. And we all know how anticipation can make things twice as sweet.

So I decided to "treat" myself to a night of black light theatre. The options are plentiful in Prague, almost one on every street corner, and I considered a black light production of Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Cats (nothing like making a good thing better, right?) but then I realised I didn't hate myself nor did I want to put myself through great mental agony so I opted for the more conservative Cabinet. Cabinet is a new work about a professor exploring great inventions of the modern era, fittingly told using the greatest invention of them all - black light theatre.

Alarm bells started ringing the minute I stepped into the theatre. A sign at the entrance read "NO MEALS SERVED DURING THE PERFORMANCE". The fact that they felt the need to warn me of this filled with the kind of dread I feel when I'm watching a movie and realise Renee Zellweger is the lead character. I don't go to the theatre expecting my stomach to be fed. Not anymore anyway. Only perhaps for them to throw my soul a morsel it can gnaw upon. So the fact that the show had this sort of warning made me think they were expecting the sort of audience one might see at Witches In Britches or The Swagman and thus would be pitching their content at that level.

The programme promised/warned me that I would be "helpless in the power of music that will touch your soul". If the great synthesiser scores of 80's fantasy films such as Ladyhawke had the ability to touch my soul, then by all means surely this music touched mine. I've always thought that all one needs to create great music is one man and his drum machine (In The Air Tonight proves this point) and the dastardly team behind Cabinet clearly agreed.



Cabinet seemed to have a plot about a mad scientist type and his beautiful-beneath-the-glasses assistant who work on all number of wacky inventions and seem to have a magic wardrobe that sends its unwitting participants into a sort of neon Narnia where black light shapes dazzle and spin around them. After having seen black light used to reveal how Australia's judicial system let down Lindy Chamberlin, I couldn't help but feel Cabinet was a little light on for plot. And my blood ran cold when I discovered that their main way of advancing the plot was to draw upon the handicapped little sister of narrative - audience participation. As they drew one hapless soul after another up on stage to be the butt of their vaudeville jokes, I died a little in side. You'd think by now I'd learn my lesson not to seek out ironic forms of entertainment particularly after seeing that production of Chess starring Daryl Braithwaite where they decided to eliminate all references to the Cold War reducing it to a musical about... chess. But I can be a slow learner.

As I stumbled out of the theatre after a thoroughly bewildering hour and an elongated curtain call, I realised that black light is to theatre what Renee Zellweger is to acting. Or Andre Rieu to classical music. Or John Wayne Gacy Jnr to childcare. It takes something beautiful and destroys it forever.