Writer: Eoin McAndrew
Director: Fay Lomas
There’s something quite filmic about Eoin McAndrew’s play, The Girl Who Was Very Good At Lying starring Rachael Rooney. A young woman takes a visiting American around her sleepy Ulster town. However, the title of the play gives away too much of its story.
21-year-old Katrina still lives at home. She works day shifts in the local pub and when she gets home she has to describe her day in detail to her mother. It’s unclear whether her mother’s interrogations are well meaning or not. The town is small and so when a stranger visits the bar Katrina’s mind rushes with possibilities.
As Katrina, Rooney is excellent and completely convinces as the young woman who likes to ‘season’ her stories with untruths. She’s also very funny, especially in her asides to the audience, but she never overdoes the comedy and so proves that Katrina’s life is more credible than her tall tales.
The play loses its way after the tour, and the historical aspects of the town and Britain’s occupation disappear completely in a narrative that begins to follow that of Fatal Attraction, the revenge thriller of 1987. Where the rest of the play has been quite imaginative – in both senses of the word – the show down scene is a disappointment.
But it always looks good with a light design (uncredited) that conjures up candlelit churches and flickering televisions. The sound design by Lex Kosanke is equally impressive and the music reaches crescendos at the same time that Katrina finishes her next barrage of lies.
The Girl Who Was Very Good At Lying feels right at home in the Jermyn Street Theatre’s Footprints Festival which continues until the end of the July, with a varied programme of one-person shows, cabaret and poetry. At only 60 minutes long, McAndrew’s play is well acted, but it can’t quite sustain its interesting ideas.
Runs until 8 July 2021
The Reviews Hub Score
Filmic
