Brighton Year-Round 2026

Pack of Lies

Wick Theatre Company

Genre: Adaptation, Drama, Fringe Theatre, Historical, Political, Theatre

Venue: The Barn, Southwick

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

Ruislip October 1960. Not the suburbia you expect to be doorstopped by the government and made an offer you can’t refuse: to have genteel spooks take up residence like furies upstairs in your daughter’s bedroom. And spy on your best friends. Even stranger if the story’s true. Hugh Whitemore 1983 Pack of Lies plays at The Barn, Southwick directed by Susanne Crosby till March 28.

Based on the memories of journalist Gay Search, the original Julie of the play – which became Cedric Messina’s BBC TV play Act of Betrayal in 1971 – Whitemore felt there was more. Search and her father gave generous and crucial input into his play. In a friendship, who betrays who? Is an act of betrayal one-sided?  Where does deception end and betrayal start? And what part of friendship is genuine, what part mere use?  There’s a rich interaction over the two-hours-twenty with interval, that goes beyond the nominal thriller which really ratchets up in Act Two.

Bob Jackson (Julian Batstone, impressively phlegmatic) and perhaps the central character Barbara Jackson (Anne Quick) live with their mid-teen daughter Julie (Sophie Hosier, a winning mix of forthrightness, pique and occasional vulnerability). They’re often visited though ever at weekends, by their breezy Canadian neighbours extrovert Helen (Caroline Marchant) and quietly genial antiquarian bookseller Peter Kroger (Matt Arnold). Barbara’s both a fine artist and  superb dress-maker and she’s creating a white dress for Helen for Christmas, fast approaching.

Marchant turns the volume up on Helen: she’s larger-than-life in jazzy period clothing, positive and well free-spirited, always acutely aware of the handsome young bodies of Julie’s ne-er do well boyfriends when she spots them in swimming pools. Marchant captures Helen’s emphatic warmth too, and turns it to acetylene when relating in a monologue downstage what happened to her in 1950.

And Helen shares confidences with Julie, can persuade her to sensible actions when Barbara despairs and lays down fiats: especially riding pillion in a motorbike in the days before helmets too. Hosier and Marchant enjoy a scene where the world might seem headed somewhere else. Arnold’s bright Canadian persona is affably believable, a quiet Canadian so to speak, impressive in his monologue downstage (a Whitemore device in this play).

Their peace I disturbed not to say their routine, with a call then a visit from Mr Stewart (Abbi Crawford), a suave “civil servant” attached to Scotland Yard via the call, though clearly something other. Crawford gleams as the reasonable face of an order, always downplaying power. He explains there’s someone who visits the Krogers and they might or might not know he’s conducting some illegal business. is resistant to Stewart’s proposals, and indeed the tenor of his conclusions. They’ve known the Krogers over five years. Bob quietly absorbs what he’s told. He works on airfields, he knows the drill. “This man’s mixed up with something criminal – well, that’s all we need to know.” Barbara Barbara though in Quick’s slowly incandescent performance, fights all the way. And how will they keep this from Julie?

Two spooks take up residence, attracting as little notice as possible. Frist Thelma (Hadera Burki, playing stum in a bright blankness, with a chink of sympathy); and later conversing with her colleague Sally (Rosy Armitage). In Armitage’s hands Sally’s altogether more sardonic, probably Oxbridge, contemptuous of Barbara’s suburban drudgery. There’s a quartet of women commenting on the day Clark Gable died.

Quick inhabits Barbara’s quandaries: that of decency and friendship, betrayal of that, and as she later says: “People don’t stop being being people just because they’ve done something wrong.” As Quick’s character becomes more enraged through Act Two, the more Quick impresses: it’s a superb performance, the standout of the evening. Elsewhere though each character impresses interacting. The listening quality of the whole cast, genuinely responding and not delivering, is a hallmark of a fine production. There are slight quibbles with clarity and sound-spots. Quick in particular surmounts them effortlessly though.

The fine set of a suburban semi of the late 1920s is divided in a 1950s-style green and cream kitchen slightly underused, and the lounge: featuring a bay window and stained glass of the period stage left. There might have been a little more theatrical preoccupation, though there’s just enough and the set and props team (there’s no named lead designer) are noted below. They deserve praise.  Lit by Martin Oakley and Crosby, with he and Julian Batstone crafting the sound design.

Batstone’s final soliloquy downstage is a moving testament to fractured friendship that didn’t quite end on January 7 1961, but set ripples. Who forgives who and who doesn’t is revealing and perhaps surprising: people are unexpectedly hurt, whatever their profession. This one-time hit though now rarely-staged Olivier-winning play (for Judi Dench) is worth tracking down and you’ve a little more time to find it in Southwick.

Producer Julian Batstone, Stage Manager Mike Wells, DSM Dan Dryer, Lighting Operation John Garland, Sound Operation Jeff Woodford

Set Design, Construction & Painting Noel Boswijk, Dave Comber, Sue Netley, Sue Chaplin, Mike King, Judith Berrill, Pete Smith, Ali Hastilow, Helen Dear, Tim Westcott, Steve Harris, Mike Wells, Peter Joyce.

Specialist Props Martin Oakley, Judith Berrill. Wardrobe Maggi Pierce, Poster Flier & Programme Cover Judith Berrill, Programme Susanne Crosby, Publicity  Emily Dennett, Susanne Crosby, Promotional Photography Phil Nair-Brown, Production Photography Sam Taylor.

Published March 28, 2026March 28, 2026 by Simon Jenner