Matilda Liar!
At the Burton Taylor 'til Sat 6th

Imagine you're at home, all your relatives around you, and you have to be sincere. Anyone asks what you were up to last night, where your money really goes or what you really think of Great Aunt Mildred's home cooking you are compelled to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Face it - who can genuinely say, with no hint of irony, that there is not something or someone in their family that irritates them senseless, or that they really are prepared to disclose every detail of their private life to their grandparents?
Yet it is exactly this nightmare that faces the reluctant eponymous heroine in Matilda Liar! Her family are particularly horrendous, everything based on stories, pie-crust promises and acceptance of their lot. None of them ever leave the house. Father Frank (Spencer?) fills his children's heads with fairy stories of kings, damsels and valiant knights in armour, but has all the panaché of an airline salad. Mother is the epitome of the repressed housewife, discontented with the boredom and sacrifice of family life but honour bound not to do anything about it. Michael mopes around in pyjamas, staring into his fishtank. Fiona has made the break as a successful career woman, but still keeps up the contented home-maker façade even though she can't abide her own children. Matilda, youngest of the happy clan, hides away reading childish books and fabricating a better existence.
Thing is, in their own twisted way, they all love each other. So when Matilda accidentally takes a truth pill before a family party she is stuck in an impossible situation - if she speaks to them honestly she will destroy the framework of the whole family, but she is incapable of doing anything else. Unlike so many other plays based around family life, Matilda Liar! never takes the easy way out, instead exploring all issues to their (il)logical conclusions. As with all families there are peaks and troughs - comedy one minute, cutting dialogue the next - but there are also moments of extreme surrealism.
The set is black and white with a chess board floor and a large staircase, allowing the drama to take place in two places at once and giving Matilda her own private space in which to conduct her piercing, fantastical monologues. An original score (from Theo Holloway) oscillates between playful and sinister and maintains an ethereal quality.
Basically, Matilda Liar is a fantastic play. Call it (very) black comedy, social comment or suburban drama, it succeeds in satisfying on multiple levels, and this innovative production certainly does it justice. Extremely impressive.
Pam Green