King’s Head Theatre 16 – 22 November. Reviewed by Claire Roderick
As part of Festival 45, celebrating its 45th anniversary, the King’s Head is showcasing new writing from around the country. In Living Between Lies, they’ve found a gem.
Written and devised by Underfoot Theatre Company – an all-female group based in London – the play is about four London women and their varying degrees of self-deception.
The stories are told episodically, jumping from one woman’s tale to the next, Alice and Lindsey reveal their stories through monologues, whilst Kim and Laura share the same scenes. This enables the writers and actors to leave the audience with cliff-hangers and shock lines, cleverly increasing the anticipation for the next revealing truth.
Alice (Magdalena McNab) is an aspiring TV presenter who has sacrificed her dream job to start a family with Harry – who is absent on the night of their anniversary. McNab is wonderful as the self-deluding Alice, allowing the audience to see the fear and anger underneath the pleading phone messages to Harry. Her “interactive art piece” drunkenly performed at Harry’s favourite pub is a fantastically funny and bitter moment, while her scene teaching a class of 6 year olds is a wonderful 21st century update of Joyce Grenfell’s monologues. The innocently brutal questions about her private life and her reactions to them are a highlight of the play.
Lindsey (Orla Sanders) is a driven woman. She sees herself as a “Super” and despise and mocks us “Norms” and our inanity. This is a woman who sees waking up before the alarm as a victory. Sanders is bitingly funny and scary and delivers scathing criticism of humanity and then slips into poetic descriptions of her train journey without missing a beat or losing credibility. Her realisation that she is no different from the Norms is full of revelations about her relationship with her mother and the boss who has betrayed her.
The emotional journey of the two women is shown physically, with Alice becoming less bedraggled as she recognises the truth about her life, and Lindsey becoming less poised and messier as she has to face her reality.
Kim (Aleks Grela) meets Laura (Joanne Fitzgerald) in the hospital waiting room and is coaxed into talking about her life in order to get prescription drugs to feed her addiction. The two actresses interplay is brilliant. Grela gradually reveals the truth about her dodgy relationship with her shiftless boyfriend – playing the vulnerable, bitter and lost character with great authenticity. Fitzgerald has a ball with Laura – slipping convincing lies into every conversation, then revealing the lie before launching blithely into another. When Laura is challenged and reveals the truth about her life, it is more ridiculous than any of her lies, and her choice to blur the lines between fantasy and reality seems almost justifiable as she reminds us that everybody lies to themselves, just to get through the day.
This is a great piece of writing, showing how we cope, or not, with life’s disasters. The way we delude ourselves that everything is fine, and how to find our way back when life unravels is ridiculed and celebrated. The message is positive – these women are survivors – even though there is almost a tragic ending; another killer line from Laura.
This is a theatre company to look out for – fantastic energy and ideas.