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Sudden Productions present The London Premiere of
Tell Me...Lies
by Carole-Anne Le Foll
Directed by Catherine Paskell
Arts Theatre
6 - 17 May 2008
A review by David Hermann for EXTRA! EXTRA!
Programme and poster describe Carole-Anne Le Foll’s second full-length play as follows. “Tell Me...Lies combines physical theatre, drama and surrealism into one brilliantly inventive play.” Woefully, not much of this apparent self-assessment holds true. Whilst Sudden Theatre’s latest production is indeed a combination of the aforementioned disciplines, it is brilliantly inventive only in the way that a broth of feathers, hooves and antlers is a brilliantly inventive blend of chicken, beef and venison: what director Catherine Paskell has chosen to serve up at the Arts Theatre consists exclusively of movement, drama and surrealism’s most unpalatable aspects. Such a scathingly unfavourable opinion calls for a comprehensive explanation, and it shall be given here, beginning, for clarity’s sake, with the aspect of ‘drama’. The action focuses on Abi (Sally Day), a young schizophrenic woman whose mother has died. She is at odds with her business-minded older sister Emma (Eleanor Samson), whose rehabilitated gangster boyfriend Derek (Jonathan Taylor) she has had an affair with. A side-plot that eventually and rather awkwardly ties in with the main storyline invites us to suspect Derek’s involvement in a series of burglaries. The dramatis personae is completed by Fleur (Carole Weyers) and Matt (Sean Carrigan), two figments of Abi’s imagination whose disproportionately energetic antics constitute the author’s attempt at surrealism and presumably necessitate the involvement of movement director Vik Sivalingam, who seems to have done the best he could in bringing about a faint sense of physical theatre. Sivalingam’s contribution serves to illuminate exactly what makes this show so frustrating to watch: The fatal flaws lie almost entirely with Le Foll’s writing. Vik Sivalingam, a brilliant and industrious young director who was formatively responsible for the mesmerizing physicality in Sheffield Theatre’s ingenious version of The Elephant Man simply didn’t have a fighting chance. The text, with its unwarranted eruptions of nonsense (which, by the way, seem to have little to do with the true colours of schizophrenia), makes it quite impossible to choreograph anything meaningful. It would be unfair to the work of many an inspired company not to be strict and propose that sequences of stylised crawling and frantic running around are not enough to earn a production the label of physical theatre. Correspondingly, it would be unfair to judge the actors on their performance in Tell Me...Lies because the dialogue is so rigid and packed with cliches that even Simon Russell Beale would have had a hard time preserving his dignity. Often, authors of this kind of writing will shun criticism and say “well, of course the dialogue seems odd: it’s surrealism!” Let it be said, therefore, that this is not the case, here. The main storyline is made up of scenes between Abi, Emma and Derek who communicate in the real world in real-world language that clearly aspires to realism. Furthermore, the style of language barely changes whenever the play does explode into surrealism. (The fact that this style of frequent welling-over into the fantastical is more accurately referred to as magic realism shall remain undiscussed for now.) One major technical flaw in Le Foll’s writing, to be perfectly honest, passed me by. To my discerning companion, however, it stuck out like a sore thumb: there is a constant, irreconcilable confusion in point of view. Fleur and Matt, whose function is to show Abi’s internal turmoil, begin to communicate with each other independently of their ‘host’. They strike up a relationship of their own, while Abi remains oblivious. Having consulted an expert on the subject I can now say with some confidence that this is simply not how schizophrenia works. The annoying chaos that fills Abi’s head and consequently the stage is more reminiscent of the vague Victorian idea of madness as an incoherently screaming hell than what is known to modern psychiatry about the nature of thought disorder. There is more method in any madness than Le Foll would have us believe. It really is a pity that Carole-Anne Le Foll has let this play out in the open seemingly without soliciting some honest feedback, because the structures and relationships she hints at are by all means interesting. The ideas are good and definitely worth exploring. One would like to find out more about each character’s relationship to each other character, but is simply not given a chance. The subject of mental health is delicate but powerful and infinitely suited to examination through theatre. This is why Carol-Anne Le Foll would benefit from the realisation that her work on this piece is not yet done and why she should devote a substantial amount of time to rewriting the text, probably in close collaboration with the clearly capable Sudden Theatre. Until such time, however, Tell Me...Lies remains unplayable.
Box Office: 0844 847 1608 £15, £12, concessions £10 THE ARTS THEATRE Matinees 3pm Wednesday 7 May NO PERFORAMNCE SUNDAY 11 MAY
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