Stacks On, a small indie company making theatre out of Flow Studios (an art gallery/performance space in Camperdown) are back with another intimate show. After the charm of April’s share house comedy For The Time Being, the team return on a more serious note with British playwright Lucy Burke’s Glitter Punch, a coming-of-age drama about sixteen-year-old Molly and her first love.

Molly (Brittany Santariga) has an unhappy home life in Greater Manchester: her dad’s not around and her mum works all the time, while dating a series of loser boyfriends. So, when Molly meets a mysterious new guy (Lachlan Stevenson, also the director) on the first day of year 10, she is instantly smitten. Over the next hour, we follow Molly as she gets a crush, falls in love and experiences a lot of life’s ‘firsts’.

Structurally, Glitter Punch feels like a one-woman-show, but the team have played with the monodrama form by including the male character on stage. However, John isn’t fully fleshed out (on purpose), so it feels like we are watching a physical version of Molly’s fantasy, which is a compelling creative choice. Stevenson’s brooding, quiet demeanour emphasises just how little Molly really knows about him.

Molly is young— 16, she repeatedly tells us— but she insists that a childhood in a tough neighbourhood with an absent father has made her grow up quickly and develop street smarts. I was reminded of Michaela Coel’s play Chewing Gum Dream, about another young precocious teen, Tracey, who thinks she knows a lot more about life than she does.

As a performer, Santariga is talented and charismatic and more than capable of holding the stage on her own (which she does for most of the hour, Stevenson has very little lines). However, Santariga is trying a little too hard to convince us of Molly’s youth, so she felt 14, not 16, which was a little disarming from an actress in her twenties. Molly’s bright-eyed naiveite is important to the story and I understand why Santariga and Stevenson emphasise it, but it feels a tad overplayed, and takes for granted the intelligence of the audience to understand what’s going on.

The Stacks On team do an impressive job of staging the play simply and effectively, on clearly quite a slim budget. The lighting design is savvy and economical, and I appreciated the restrained use of Chris Milbourn’s soulful sound design.

Sitting in the intimate Flow Studios theatre space, I was struck by the reminder that this is what indie theatre’s all about: putting on stories with a group of friends with lots of love and not much money. Stacks On are exactly the kind of company that we should all be supporting in our theatre-going.

Having now pivoted to more serious drama after the charming comedy For The Time Being early this year, the Stacks On team have successfully demonstrated their range, and I look forward to seeing their next show.

Glitter Punch is playing until Wednesday 16^th August at Flow Studios, Camperdown.

Jo Bradley