Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Adam Stubbs, Isham R. Redford, Eve Smith.

There are so many classes of lies, the half truths, the simply tarnished and embellished, whether to get us out of trouble or to enhance our reputation within a certain social circle of friends, the lie can always be seen as the spectre in the crowd but also the warm and comfortable friend who covers us in her shroud as the day wears on. The statements of I am fine, I can cope, all is well, these are the white lies that are acceptable to others and in so making us the accomplice to the well meaning deceit, that we are White Liars who spread the white lie.

As part of a double bill of theatre at The Gregson Memorial Institute, Liverpool Network Theatre Group showcased Sir Peter Shaffer’s unnerving but alluring play White Liars. Despite the cold that seeped across the air and rose up through the concrete pavements of the city, the afternoon sun hardly catching breath as it strode across the sky between the winter darkness, the generous nature of the production and the words of damned agreement that passed between the three characters on stage was more than enough to warm the heart of the audience who took their places in witnessing how deceit and not saying what you truly believe you desire can break apart any truth once held.

The point of the play is taken up very well by Eve Smith as Baroness Lemberg, the reader of fortunes and of the future, the grasping of the lie that has built up between the two men, the flowering rock star and the impressionable manager is etched on her face. It is a confusion that the audience share that the lie that has passed between the two men has gone on so long but reflecting on what was another age, another set of morals ground out by a endless stream of hypocritical dictations by Government, the end result is just the same, that we lie and tell untruths to get what we want.

A very good performance by the cast of Sir Peter Shaffer’s White Liars, one that despite the available space in the Institute; was very well received and with absolute justification.

Ian D. Hall