FringeReview UK 2026
Dear Liar
Jermyn Street Theatre
Genre: Adaptation, Biographical Drama, classical, Comedy, Costume, Drama, Historical, Mainstream Theatre, Political, Theatre
Venue: Jermyn Street Theatre
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
“That x-ray of my foot shows it pure white. When I die I’ll bequeath you my feet so you can make a glove stretch out of the bones.” Who’d not fall for that opening gambit in seduction? Jerome Kilty’s Dear Liar, adapting original letters and directed by Jermyn Street’s artistic director Stella Powell-Jones, plays there till March 7.
Stella Powell-Jones and her team make the strongest possible case. A must-see for all lovers of theatre, wit, and wincing put-downs.
Review
“That x-ray of my foot shows it pure white. When I die I’ll bequeath you my feet so you can make a glove stretch out of the bones.” Who’d not fall for that opening gambit in seduction? George Bernard Shaw could push near the white-knuckle in his letters to Stella, better known as actress Mrs Patrick Campbell; in the days when Offred wasn’t a thing. The wonder is Shaw kept it up for over 40 years as Campbell swerved, nearly succumbed, and they enraged each other across the globe. And ended, luckily, in a hatbox under the latter’s bed in France; snatched from the invading Germans’ noses in 1940. Jerome Kilty’s Dear Liar, adapting original letters and directed by Jermyn Street’s artistic director Stella Powell-Jones, plays there till March 7.
Kilty’s 1957 two-hander could easily creak a little, condemned to TV; or amateur revivals. Powell-Jones is having none of it, and shows why it was a worldwide success, and continued to fascinate long after Shaw had gone into temporary eclipse. Tom Paris’s set and costumes briefly allow a projection of the seaside, but a few screens, ladder, hatbox and typewriter are almost the only props required over a yellow/black chequered floor and diaphanous Art Nouveau-ish drapes. It’s period costumes – Rachel Pickup’s in particular – that anchor character; particularly hats. Lit un-fussily by Chris McDonnell, there’s some surprises; and the music composed by Harry Blake includes an ominous typewriter clunk to place a full stop to a scene. During 1914-18 it morphs into a crazed war-march of lacunae.
Powell-Jones makes maximum use of Kilty’s dialogue, interspersing and reallocating lines: so one take up another’s breath and Shaw can be inhabited by Campbell and visa versa. There’s also those moments when the two meet: here it’s drama, as Elliot Pritchard’s movement direction make small shifts seem kinetic. Much of the seemingly inevitable stiffness vanishes. This is a fluid, engaging, even engrossing courtship; as the nimbus of words fly overhead. Much like the pink paper aeroplanes hurled at one moment by Pickup, bouncing off period stays and hats.
Pickup glows both dignified and minx-like (as Shaw might put it) as Campbell. She’s radiant and downcast, simmering with stifled desire, quite often rage. And Pickup exhibits something Shaw has no empathy for: grief, profound loss, silence. Pickup’s Campbell is conscious of her pre-eminence – there’s a dazzle of references that bounce off her from these letters, as if reflectors flashed across the stage. But more than Shaw she expresses anxieties: for her husband and son. Her daughter Stella gets a brief mention and we find out why Campbell was named Beatrice Rose Stella: her mother loved Dante more than her or anybody. We’re presented with someone already primed to love literature and words more than most. And, like Dante, indulge in out-of-reach desires. Out of reach, though not quite out of touch.
Alan Turkington’s Shaw modulates mordantly from Shavian inflection through brief gamuts of other characters. His delivery’s pointed: as someone who might prefer to lose a friend than a joke. Turkington exudes the wit of a man who can’t help his own self-delight: an erudition that sabotages just at the point where a few words might best pierce the ear of grief. Yet it’s Shaw who realises where Campbell’s increasingly out of synch with theatre and the film-world in her later years: who tries desperately to help her move on. It’s clear Shaw at least was shrewder about himself in relation to the world than she was; and of her. Pity about the empathy. Which here shows as crushing absence in a moment of his general rage at personal tragedy. Though Shaw’s jealousy over one Campbell admirer that leads somewhere is comic (and his jealous wife’s offstage delight); but shows essential decency in both writers.
They started corresponding professionally in 1899 when both were married: indeed Shaw had married Charlotte only the previous year; a curious platonic relationship. Campbell was widowed during the Boer War in 1900 and after a pause Shaw began to lay siege, and Campbell respond warily. Wit’s not one-sided. Campbell rallies in a relationship whose epistolary eroticism was tempered by real-life meetings, climaxing as it were in the rehearsals for Pygmalion in April 1914. Written for Campbell in 1912-13, a serious traffic accident prevented her from playing the “cockney slut” which took all Campbell’s prowess. For one thing she couldn’t do cockney (it recalls that old Heineken advert with the RP actress). Pickup revels in an appalling failure and gradually modulates Campbell’s vowels to something approximating stage cockney.
“Write plays about whatever you wish but not, please, about us!” That injunction happily was ignored. Shaw himself sent all Campbell’s letters back to her in the late 1930s (they continued corresponding). Not from pique. He hoped a collected exchange of letters might help Campbell in her financial distress. It’s a volte-face from his previous fiat on Campbell’s publishing them in 1921. And Shaw handsomely admitted how wrong he was when Campbell ignored him.
The brilliance of Shaw’s metaphors when off-duty as it were (but when was he ever?) deserve as much exposure as all but the finest of his plays: and at 105 minutes it’s considerably shorter too. The humanity, and human cost though of loving digs deeper than Shaw was able to do in nearly all of them. And Campbell knew she was too self-deprecating about her own writing ability. Though still for some a static artform, more can be done with Dear Liar than many verbatim pieces. Powell-Jones and her team make the strongest possible case. A must-see for all lovers of theatre, wit, and wincing put-downs.
Casting Director Sarah Jones CDG, Associate and Movement Director Elliot Pritchard, Voice Coach Nick Trumble, Costume Supervisor Abigail Caywood, Manager Lucy Mewis-McKerrow, Stage Manager Summer Keeling, ASM Placement Alesha Grundy.
Costume Maker Rachel Hodgson, Costume Alterations Cheryl Sime, Design Assistant Jamie Kirkwood, Production Technicans Edward Callow, Heather Smith and Ted Walliker.
Producer Jessie Anand, PR Kate Morley PR, Photography David Monteith-Hodge. Special thanks to St James’s Piccadilly and The Society of Authors.
