There’s nothing funny about the ingredients that make up Anthony Nielsen’s 2002 farce The Lying Kind – the death of an elderly couple’s daughter in a car accident, paedophilia, animal cruelty, mental illness, old age, heart disease. Yet in the true tradition of classic British dark comedy he has written a gag-a-minute, clever farce that manages to not only have the audience in stitches throughout but also ruminate on the question, “Can lying ever be an act of kindness?”
The central characters of the play are a pair of totally inept British bobbies Blunt and Gobbel who have the unenviable task of delivering the tragic news regarding the death of a young woman to her elderly parents on Christmas eve.
The two policemen (brilliantly played by Alan Paris and Edward Mercieca) are straight out of Laurel and Hardy with a touch of the surreal. Gobbel is the more sensitive of the pair, while Blunt puts on a fake facade of strength. Neither of them wants to be the one to break the news to the elderly couple and they find themselves caught up in a tangle of lies and half truths that descends into utter chaos and public humiliation.
The elderly couple, Garson and Balthazar Conner (Polly March and Anthony Edridge) are as odd a couple as the two bobbies. Mrs Conner suffers from bouts of psychosis where she imagines she is working on a cruise liner whilst her clueless husband suffers from numerous ailments including a very weak heart that can give out at any moment.
March was excellent in her portrayal of the elderly Garson, skilfully balancing the farcical with the pathos of her cruel condition. Edridge too produced a fine performance yet the production might have benefitted from having an older actor cast in his role.
The other characters that continue to turn Blunt and Gobbel’s Christmas eve into a nightmare are Gronya (Magda van Kuilenburg), a self-styled vigilante hell bent on weeding out any paedophiles from the neighbourhood, her daughter Carol (Michaela Fenech)and the cross-dressing vicar Reverend Shandy (Thomas Camilleri).
Van Kuilenburg played Gronya as a scary mix of Vicky Pollard (from the Little Britain show) and Lauren (from the Catherine Tate show). With her, Blunt and Gobbel, find themselves once more constrained to lie but this time it is fear rather than kindness that motivates their lying.
Fenech’s cameo though brief was very well played, while Camilleri’s hilarious vicar threatened to steal the show.
Chris Gatt’s direction was fast paced and tight and the absence of an interval was a wise choice in ensuring that the momentum was sustained right through to the end. The stage design by Romualdo Moretti was extremely effective in creating the right mood as well as smoothly transitioning the action from the exterior of the Conner’s house to the interior whilst keeping both spaces visibly connected throughout.
Audiences have come to expect high quality from a Unifaun Theatre production. Although this was by far one of their more mainstream shows it was a hugely entertaining evening with a clever script and some top-notch comic acting.
The play was staged at Sir Temi Zammit Hall.