​Claire and Simon have been married for years. Everything is fine. Just fine. But somehow, they think there must be more to life than duck a l’orange every Wednesday…

Enter Roger. An imaginary friend to spice up their relationship….with unexpected consequences.

This razor-sharp observational comedy is written by award-winning Dr. Who script-writer Robert Shearman, and deals with sensitive contemporary issues from identity to loneliness in a compassionate, supportive and funny manner.

Presented with Pontardawe Arts Centre and Arts Council Wales

 

Creative Team

Director: Nancy Ellis

Designer: Ellie Reynolds

Claire: Polly Kilpatrick

Simon: Richard Nichols

Sound Designer: Tony Davies

Company Manager: Karen Myles

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​​Y perfformiad cyntaf yng Nghymru o White Lies gan Robert Shearman

Mae Claire a Simon wedi bod yn briod ers blynyddoedd. Mae mwy i fywyd na duck à l’orange … fel Roger.  Ffrind dychmygol i ychwanegu ychydig o sbeis at y berthynas … gyda chanlyniadau annisgwyl.

Mae’r comedi arsylwadol finiog hon wedi’i hysgrifennu gan y sgriptiwr arobryn, Robert Shearman, un o sgriptwyr Doctor Who, ac mae’n delio â materion cyfoes, o hunaniaeth i unigrwydd, mewn modd tosturiol, cefnogol a doniol.

Mae’r cwmni theatr a ddaeth â Shirley Valentine, It’s A Wonderful Life a Casablanca i chi yn dod â’i steil theatrig i berl fodern.

Cydweithio gyda Canolfan Celfyddydau Ponatardae a Chyngor Celfyddydau Cymru.

 

 

Review by Nigel Jarret on Arts Scene In Wales Website

If you knew nothing about it beforehand and were led into a theatre to see Robert Shearman’s tragi-comic two-hander White Lies performed in French in the guise of a long-lost play by Eugène Ionesco, it might have registered as an absurdist drama in the modernist style, which is really what it is, in Shearman’s sparkling English script.

Maybe it’s that hatstand, one of the few props in Lighthouse Theatre’s touring production by Nancy Ellis in her full-scale directing début and ubiquitous in all the Swansea company’s shows so far. Ionesco would have loved it and the idea of employing it, like the eponymous chairs of his 1952 play. In fact, Ionesco’s The Chairs focuses on a couple organising the seats for a crowd of invisible guests; White Lies is about a married couple, Claire and Simon, who have invented an invisible guest, Roger, to give their moribund married lives some meaning.

Shearman’s scenario is as heart-rending as it’s absurd, though fifteen years of marriage must have been crushingly uneventful for Claire and Simon to have given in to fantasy so early – well, relatively early. One could almost believe that it was some kinky diversion to keep a dull marriage alive, the kinkiness always triumphing over the tedium. And it is tedious: Claire seems to do nothing but hoover and shop, shop and hoover, and Simon’s workaday world is leavened only by sweaty squash court sessions in the evening. Routine is all, even down to the weekly dinner invitation to the non-existent Roger.

The premise is not only that Claire and Simon have nothing much to say to each other but that their capacity for making friends beyond their doorstep has also shrivelled. Were Roger real, of course, absurdity would have given way to reality, but we’d probably have been offered a less farcical and entertaining night at the theatre. The dilemmas belong to Claire and Simon, not to Roger.