MORE LIES ABOUT JERZY. To 24 November.
London
MORE LIES ABOUT JERZY
by Davey Holmes
New End Theatre To 24 November 2002
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat, Sun 3.30pm
Runs 2hr One interval
TICKETS 020 7794 0022
Review Timothy Ramsden 3 November
Fascinating fact-based fiction about a writer's fiction-based fact.Do you believe what you read in reviews, books, or hear on TV? This review tells the truth. Even the opinions are truly held. Honest.
Where does lying start? George Layton closely resembles Polish ex-pat writer Jerzy Kosinski. His character's book 'Vantage Point' treads the poor-boy-suffering-in-Nazi-Poland line of 'The Painted Bird' which made Kosinski a bestselling American media-darling in the sixties and seventies. Till, in 1982, Village Voice exposed it as unhistorical and not inconsiderably ghost-written.
Layton also captures a convincing bounce and the way jovial energy turns nasty under pressure – there's a cold moment, beautifully caught in Guy Retallack's production, when Carl McCrystal's fellow-villager is snubbed by Jerzy. For cheery Rysiek has the knowledge to confound Jerzy's orphan story, collapsing its big moment of autobiographical drama into comedy.
Holmes' script follows a twin-track. Formal investigations into claims for co-author status and a tribute to U.S. journalism's fact-checking which uncovers Jerzy's inconsistencies, run alongside a journey into Jerzy's motivation. When is a lie not a lie? When it's believed to be true? Might have been true? Expresses a truth? When metaphor's presented as fact?
The content problem would surely have been fine if only 'Vantage Point' had been presented as a novel. The play could be subtitled 'My Ego and I'. Jerzy must own his creation, content and authorship alike: he's first seen exhibiting Kosinski's recorded delight in sexually frank TV celebrity.
The web's tangled all right: the fact-checker's sleeping with Jerzy, his ultimate witness is the father he'd claimed died when he was seven, his latest literary and bedtime collaborator, knowingly or otherwise, passes off her swollen cancerous stomach as pregnancy.
All this could have whirled into a farcical craze, or sobered to greater psychological or documentary detail. Yet it remains fascinating, even poised between the material's various possibilities. Holmes and Retallack don't quite create the right momentum but it's a solidly-acted, intriguing piece.
Nicolai Hart Hansen, who has often made bold design statements turning the New End red, here provides a suitable blank-sheet surround, a human bust and a tiny bookshelf high near the roof: real relationships and true history forever out of Jerzy's reach.
Jerzy Lesnewski: George Layton
Isabel Paris: Karen Archer
Georgia Fischer: Jacqueline Nairn
Arthur Bausley: Derek Hagen
Rysiek Zrupina: Carl McCrystal
Harry/Mr Kerry/Witold Twarog: Richard Alleman
Bret/Mr Sorvillo/Mr Lesnewski: Paul Vaughan Evans
Stagehand/Mrs Gruszka/Kasia: Natasha Oxley
Director: Guy Retallack
Designer: Nicolai Hart Hansen
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick
Sound/Composers: Chris Branch, Tom Haines
2002-11-04 11:20:50