The Lying Kind ( Archived )

Reviews

newspaper reviews

Pictured (L to R): Thomas Fisher, Darrell D’Silva, Shiela Burrell; Darrell D’Silva, Thomas Fisher;

Photography by Gautier Deblonde

Director: Anthony Neilson; Designer: Bob Bailey; Lighting Designer: Chahine Yavroyan; Sound Designer: Neil Alexander

Cast: Sheila Burrell, Darrell DSilva, Thomas Fisher, Patrick Godfrey, Alison Newman, Matthew Pidgeon, Kellie Shirley

‘Like most of Neilson’s writing, including The Censor and The Penetrator, this is not for the high-minded or over-sensitive, but it did have me weeping and breathless with laughter at the grisly misunderstandings.

‘Neilson turns to farce like an old hand. His play is littered with virtuoso twists which transform the simple scenario into a hilarious living nightmare.

‘Besides Neilson’s love of foul language, he also has Joe Orton’s ear for exasperating word play and a similar feel for knock-about slapstick. Yapping lap dogs get truncheoned and stuffed in helmets while the comatose vicar is bundled into a cupboard – only to make an immaculately timed resurrection.

‘Neilson’s farce is not without its message. He gleefully almost recklessly, gets stuck into a Punch & Judy treatment of psychology of moral panic and of anti-paedophile hysteria. Neilson knows his taboos and goes for the jugular.

‘So, while the cops unwittingly demonstrate how it’s cruel to be kind, Alison Newman’s Gronya demonstrates how blind vengeance can be taken for public service.

‘The breathless mania at the heart of the play is perfectly caught in Neilson’s frantic directions of his own writing and is cunningly disguised as a good old-fashioned romp in Bob Bailey’s deceptively conventional design.’

DAILY MAIL

‘Darrel D’Silva and Thomas Fisher are a delight as the inept, squeamish policemen – the one a mixtur eof Harry Worth and Eric Morecambe, the other a lanky goon in the Frank Spencer mould.’

THE INDEPENDENT

‘As an alternative to pantomime this Christmas, this works very well.’

THE STAGE

‘his play gleefully and skilfully heaps an ever more precarious load of farcical indignities upon his hapless case.

‘such is the fine mess that PCs Blunt and Gobbel get themselves into, a dead daughter soon seems the least of their worries. And Neilson’s trademark provocativeness is satisfyingly on display.’

TIME OUT

‘Neilson’s premise is seasonally ghoulish: two dumb cops, who quickly fall into a Laurel and Hardy pattern of bully and victim, are deputed on Christmas Eve to tell an elderly couple that their daughter has died in a motorway crash. While dithering outside the door, they are assaulted by a paedophile-hunting mum convinced they are trying to spirit away a child abuser. And, once inside the house, their humane inability to tell the truth, leads to endless misunderstanding.’

THE GUARDIAN

‘A Christmas play at the Royal Court was never going to be like a Christmas show anywhere else, especially when the author is Anthony Neilson, best known for such in-yer-face shockfests as Penetrator, The Censor and this year’s Stitching.

‘There is no hint of fairy-tale enchantment here, no good-humoured dames, no glow of bonhomie. Neilson’s idea of fun is paedophile hunters, certifiably stupid policeman, fatal car accidents, and the gratuitous ill-treatment of chihuahuas.

‘The action takes place on Christmas Eve. Two absurdly dim coppers arrive at the doorstep of a terraced house with the unenviable task of telling the elderly couple inside that their daughter has been killed in a car crash. As soft-hearted as they are dim, they find this almost impossible to do, and matters go from bad to worse when the Alzheimer’s-afflicted old lady gets the wrong end of the stick, and thinks her beloved labrador has been run over.

‘I have always been a sucker for dialogue at cross purposes, and Neilson comes up with a classic routine here, the cops thinking the old man is volunteering a description of his recently deceased daughter when he’s actually describing the dog. “Long, very prominent teats,” says dear old silver-haired Balthasar (Patrick Godfrey). “Smells a bit mangy can’t you just burn her and be done with it?” The plods’ outrage is a joy to behold.

‘Thomas Fisher, coming on like a cross between Frank Spencer and Rodney from Only Fools and Horses, is outstanding as the terminally idiotic cop, Gobbel; Darrell D’Silva supplies strong support as his almost equally stupid straight-man; and Matthew Pidgeon has moments as a sanctimonious vicar in women’s underwear.’

DAILY TELEGRAPH

‘Neilson’s plot development is as satisfying as it is unexpected. And you can forgive a lot of a play in which a cop hides the chihuahua he thinks he’s killed inside his helmet, only for it to recover its teeth and claws.

‘Add a fierce, foul-mouthed Alison Newman as a vigilante mum, proudly parading a T-shirt embossed PAPS or Parents Against Paedophile Scum, and you have plenty more opportunity for the mistaken identities and misunderstandings on which farce thrives. By the ending – this time, prepared-for, surprising, and a lot funnier than it is sad – I myself was laughing pretty freely.’

THE TIMES