Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Lewis Bray, Debbie Brannan, Sharon Byatt.

The sacred act of the promise is such that the one put under pressure to preserve their word can act as a conduit to a breakdown, the silence overwhelming, the bond unfairly skewed in the favour of the one whose secret acts like an infection, mutating, twisting, until it becomes unrecognisable. Not all promises are the same, however, the ones that dig into the psyche, the ones that precede a climatic, even devastating event, are the one that we feel are the ones where no one in the end comes out it with their self-assurance, intact.

A promise made is a sign of power, a drawing in of the audience that it was intended for, and it is one that Liverpool playwright Deborah Morgan understands almost as if by instinct as her new play, Knee Deep In Promises unfolds with care, the complex trust that Dean’s recently passed mother placed in the virtue of the secret is as intricate as the unstitching of his own grief as he comes to terms with a previous promise made to another woman, and one that he kept too well.

It is in the feeling of inclusion that we agree to keep a promise but to do so can lead to situations which are, by their very nature, both unwelcome and comedic in equal measure and it takes a gracious, enquiring mind to put both of these qualities in their place.

To explore such a theme as a writer is to seek out a truth of how comedy and death are entwined, how the tears that fall are often one and the same, and with the blessing of the three actors, Lewis Bray, Debbie Brannan and Sharon Byatt, who epitomise the pursuit of such lofty goals, the despair, the rationale and the need to see life for the joke it is, is one of captured ideal, an agreement reached and the promise enacted upon.

There is no guarantee that the promise will ever be kept, we are not in control of other’s adherences to the pact made; however for Deborah Morgan and the team behind Knee Deep In Promises, it is one that fulfils the oath of a passionate play and the well observed bittersweet comedy that drives audiences to the theatre.

Ian D. Hall