I was lucky to go to London last week, and the thing I will remember my whole life in the visit to Unicorn Theatre for Liar, Liar - a gripping show for teenage audiences.
We are always told that we should tell the truth - but then it didn't do Cordelia in King Lear much good. Fourteen-year- old Grace (Danusia Samal) lives near the Olympic Park with her older sister and her dad, David, who drinks too much. Their mother walked out after she discovered David was sleeping with her best friend, and now she is starting a new family.
Grace, meanwhile, uses her vivid imagination to spin the yams she thinks others want to hear. When she disappears one night, she tells her dad she was at a rave, and she tells her sister that she was having a night of passion with a boy. But when it turns out that a child went missing on that night, and Steve from Neighbourhood Watch starts playing Policeman Plod, Grace suddenly discovers that both truth and lies can be very dangerous indeed.
Writer E.V. Crowe, whose Hero and Kin have both been staged at the Royal Court, and rising young director Blanche
McIntyre, have created a gripping show for teenage audiences that encompasses video games and a particularly tense couple of scenes that use projected text from instant messaging to fine effect. The show sometimes feels both too packed and yet not detailed enough, but a quartet of fine performances cover the cracks. Carl Patrick is particularly good as the creepy neighbour who attempts to get the truth by fair means or foul, yet who is blinded by his prejudices.
James Perkins's design conjures both urban wastelands and Graces bedroom, perched like a tower in a fairytale kingdom, and there is no shirking of the suggestion that truth is slippery and sometimes treacherous.
I wish to go to the theater more often.