The Pretender

The whole show is loosely held together by the concept of lying, focusing on the lies that wrack a man on the night before his wedding. He faces the predicament of not having the one hundred wedding guests that he has promised to fill the marquee with: he has told… a white lie.

What ensues is a slightly garbled retelling of the various lies told by this man, as well as some painful moments where he tries to justify his lies with expressions like, “I didn’t have the happiest of childhoods”.

What jars about this show is Andy Godfrey’s seeming need to provide a confessional commentary alongside a random mix of theatrical techniques including physical theatre, animation, ineffectual stand-up and conversations with a projection. Godfrey, in his exploration of form, is lacking purposeful content to bind the show together.

Most perplexing of all he rounds the show off with a statement about the show’s material, “I could have made it all up”. Unfortunately, the whole show seems so contrived that I hadn’t considered any other possibility.

– Charlotte Pegram