Bouquets & Brickbats - Lie Club Review (4.3 Stars)

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13/08/24

Paradise Green (The Club), Edinburgh

We’re at a meeting of Liars Anonymous and Tracey (Rachel DeFontes) is holding forth about her life as a compulsive liar – the many ways in which that compulsion has brought her to the very edge of disaster. But, as she gleefully points out, in a world where Fake News holds sway, where serial fibbers can be elevated to the highest positions in society, can anybody be trusted to supply a straight answer to a simple question? Maybe, she suggests, lying is ultimately inevitable.

There’s a new face at the meeting. Ben (Peter Jeffries) is in a similar predicament to Tracey. His inability to tell the truth has already cost him his marriage and his prestigious job and yet he still feels the need to continue in the same vein. There’s an instant attraction between the two of them, and they soon find themselves entering into an edgy and unpredictable relationship as they probe each other’s lives. But how can there be any sense of trust when neither of them appears to be capable of saying a single true word and when no subject, no matter how sacred, is considered something to come clean about? 

Lie Club is a propulsive, fragmented slice of absurdist theatre, written and performed by DeFontes and Jeffries, a story that twists and spirals in unexpected directions as the lies the couple tell each other begin to spin out of control. 

But which of them will break first?

This is a fresh and compelling narrative, driven by powerful performances by the two actors who are clearly delighting in the absolute mayhem they are creating. Their characters’ actions invoke some bigger questions. Is anything we think we know about ourselves actually real? When is it acceptable to lie about a particular subject? When should you throw up your hands and admit you’re telling a porkie pie? And, perhaps most interestingly, are any scenes in the drama we’re watching to be taken at face value?

Lie Club is a great example of the Fringe at its best – a full-throttle two-hander that provides more questions than answers and has me leaving the theatre with plenty to think about. Luckily my chauffeur is waiting outside to pick me up in a stretch limo and he drives me straight back to my mansion in Murrayfield, where Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are eagerly waiting to hear my advice…

Whoah! I think this lying business might be contagious.

4.3 stars

Philip Caveney