You can’t fault playwright Degna Stone for ambition. In 45 minutes, The Lies covers the legacy of colonialism, the toppling of slaver statues and the murder of Stephen Lawrence. If you include the headlines on the tabloids scattered around Ali Pritchard’s set, you could throw in Harry and Meghan’s run-in with the paparazzi and Suella Braverman’s immigration policy.
And still that does not account for Stone’s central dilemma: a more domestic drama in which Leah, played earnestly by the playwright, frets about a deteriorating relationship with their teenage daughter. We never see the girl, but we know she is called Angel, a supernatural name in keeping with the make-believe games, half-truths and outright lies with which adults pacify children to protect them from a cruel world.
That, at least, is Leah’s concern. They have persuaded themselves that the tales parents tell to their credulous children – whether that be about the tooth fairy’s cash-for-milk-teeth scam or the Easter bunny’s hidden chocolates – inevitably damage communication when those children grow worldly wise. If Angel can’t trust her mother about her Christmas presents, why should she believe anything else?
As an argument it has two flaws, both of which Stone seems to be aware of. The first is that as they get older, children are all too happy to play along with their parents’ pretence. If Leah and Angel are not talking, the blame is unlikely to lie with Father Christmas. The second is that the myths of empire and similar narratives are of a different order to the white lies we tell to smooth our daily interactions. There is a connection, but the analogy is weightier than the mother-daughter scenario can reasonably carry.
As Donald Trump makes another play for the White House and Boris Johnson is subject to yet more police questions, Stone has pertinent questions for a dissembling age. The answers stay out of reach, but Matt Jamie’s production is enlivened by an excellent performance by Luca Rutherford, wittily self-absorbed as a chocolate-nibbling rabbit and spangly tooth fairy, adding a surreal counterpoint to Stone’s unease.
At Alphabetti theatre, Newcastle, until 3 June
