Tell Me…Lies

Published Wednesday 7 May 2008 at 16:30 by Paul Vale

On the day of her mother’s funeral, the symptoms of Abi’s paranoid schizophrenia become more and more apparent.

It is not until a year later, as she attempts to run away with a friend’s savings, that her sister Emma really begins to understand the problems they must face together.

Author Carole-Anne Le Foll has devised a theatrical piece which exposes the turmoil of mental illness. Sadly the devices are fairly transparent from the outset and the play smacks of misguided albeit well-intentioned melodrama. Catherine Paskell’s direction attempts to add style, mingling faux-physical theatre with realism, but it never really pulls together enough for an audience to care.

The actors work hard to bring some drama to the piece, but the different acting styles never really gel. As real people, Sally Day and Eleanor Samson make an acceptable, dysfunctional family group. Day as Abi gives a slick, somewhat insular performance that doesn’t really suit the venue, although she gets full marks for evading a costume disaster in character. Samson as the sister Emma fares a little better, perhaps as we are more able to relate to her plight. But sadly the script doesn’t allow the relationship to unfold. Instead we are given the characters of Matt and Fleur who represent Abi’s burgeoning schizophrenia.

Sean Carrigan as Matt gains some credibility as a slightly menacing imaginary neighbour, but then looses it all by being inexplicably dressed as a garden gnome and Carole Weyers as the annoying, imaginary alter ego Fleur is allowed to overact terribly throughout.