How can exploits and love expressed by a liar be believed? Can friendship survive false impressions? When is the awful truth awe-full and even artificial but socially necessary? David Ives takes us to Paris, 1643, to explore answers given by a great French writer of Baroque plays and tests them in Ives’s own style through to our time. And a funny journey it is! The titular hero Dorante (Scott Kulper’s fully formed dandy) postures back to his home bragging of supposed exploits in war and womanizing. It’s clear he finds it easier to lie—even to himself—than tell the truth. So we immediately wonder who he really is and go along to see if whoever he is can be a true hero. Provided to clue us in on what isn’t true and point out what’s exposition in general, Dorante’s new servant Cliton (attractive, forthright Brandon Malconado) cannot tell a lie. His importance throughout is being earnest and honest, but we’ll find his relationship to Dorante exceeds Cliton’s service to him. Another guy with info when needed is Philliste (Brett Mack, reliable). As for romance, Dorante’s father Geronte (interpreted by Michael Fischer as a dedicated matchmaker) has been preparing to hook him up with Clarice (bright, enthusiastic Kelly Elizabeth Smith). Her mistress Lucrece (Jessie Taylor, proper though mischievous), who has seen and likes Dorante, creates a further complication by asking Clarice to pose as her to test his suitability as a husband. Believing her to be the aristocratic Lucrece, Dorante flamboyantly tries to woo Clarice. That would please his dad but not Alcippe, Dorante’s friend since school days. He’s secretly engaged to her and rightly played by Wyatt McNeil as jealous and hotheaded. (A hilarious duel between him and Dorante is accomplished with lies and only sounds of swords.) Romance in The Liar moves along with Isabelle, Jillian Courtney’s sexpot servant of Lucrece, delivering a love letter and a diary. Isabelle has a twin sister, Sabine, who’s a dominatrix to be dealt with. With the Dorante-Clarice runabout seeming to dominate, we get some suspense over whether Lucrece will assert herself and whether the various lovers are ever going to wind up not only together but as right couples. (Dorante’s concocted marriage to a pregnant wife is a quite complicating factor.) A particular delight of this play is Ives’s language--the well-forced rhymes (though some are too contrived) and metaphysical images (e.g. a loved one is like a clam) in choreographed poetry. The actors sometimes render Ives’s rhymed couplets in sing-song fashion, but they survive, as do injected quotations from Shakespeare, anachronisms, and modern slang. We find typical comic devices of mistaken identities, mis-delivered messages, the finding of a lost sibling. Sometimes Ives delves into the precarious linguistically and plot wise, but director Justin Lucero assures stylistic consistency. He doesn’t succeed 100 per cent in taming The Liar’s verbosity and frenetic pace, but he directs the actors’ activity through comic schtick to audience acceptance and much final applause. We find the costumes typically late 17th century with frills and color or their absence separating the characters’ classes, as do their hair styles. The set is attractive, especially in the case of the garden walled in grass, though why that grass also covers a bench top is a mystery. Do the questions with which we began get answered satisfactorily? Well, we must remember that The Liar is a comedy and so has a predetermined kind of end. Here it’s not given the lie.
