Writer: Justin Cartledge
Director: Amy Clayton
Set in an unnamed American town in 1981 and with a narrative spanning more than a decade, White Lies is a cold case detective story that also takes in references to Vietnam as an FBI agent returns to the place they grew up for the first time in seven years to investigate the discovery of the body of someone who went missing in 1971.
Reported missing by his father the day after he was last seen, the agents suspicions are immediately aroused with the suggestion that either the father himself was responsible or that his claim that his son had no known enemies is not entirely true.
As the narrative unfolds more emerges about the dead man and how his actions had affected most of the community, including the agent herself. At the same time, other deaths, disappearances and the onset of Alzheimer’s in her father – revealed as the reason for the agent’s lengthy absence from home – work to give the impression that this is either a mystery that doesn’t want to be solved or one where the answer is already known by anyone who was around at the time.
Working without a set, and at times using actors off stage to speak words from the past heard by actors on stage, the play is simplistically staged and competently acted, but it never breaks new ground and feels like it is running through set piece tropes with the characters, their back stories, and the events that led to the murder and followed on from it.
It’s pleasant enough as a time filler, and well acted by a cast that are clearly invested in the script by Justin Cartledge, but White Lies doesn’t have enough to make it a main feature.
Runs until 23 August 2025
