The Girl Who Was Very Good at Lying
Omnibus Theatre

THERE’S a fragile exuberance at the heart of this one-hander from new writer Eoin McAndrew.

On the face of it, this is a comic piece, full of wild fantasies and confabulation, youthful yearning for excitement, and the sheer joy to be found in storytelling.

Rachael Rooney keeps her audience spellbound throughout. Her command over this complex piece is absolute. There are layers of emotion in each tale she tells, and some soaring flights of fancy, yet the bathos in each narrative is never bumpy.

Rooney is Catriona, struggling under the weight of small village life. Teenagers and youngsters rarely thrive on constant monitoring; it can bend or even break them. Catriona’s mother seems to stage a routine inquisition every teatime – or so we’re led to believe.

Lying, says our protagonist, is a god-given skill and should be honed. There is real pride in her boasting; her self-esteem depends on this skill and it’s troubling to realise that reality just doesn’t do it for Catriona.

A handsome American walks into the bar where she works, kickstarting an attraction which becomes obsession in the blink of an eye. McAndrew’s script says this nameless tourist is even more handsome by virtue of being American – in one phrase, he delivers us into a world where every Yank is considered glamorous.

Catriona grabs the chance to show the visitor around her hometown. Trouble is, there’s relatively little to show. Not a problem for this Northern Irish Scheherazade. She’s off, with lurid tales of nuns and priests in a mass orgy, conducted in the church, no less.

A visit to an old manor house, clearly part of the Anglo-Irish regime, elicits a fantasy in which starving townsfolk break in and feast on the landowner and his guests.

A story from the Irish civil war has English troops shooting 200 rebels in this tiny village. The American, claiming Irish roots of course, laps it up. Catriona lets us into her fraud, with a shrug: “It’s something the English would’ve done.”

And there it is. Empirical truths are at the heart of all storytelling, and these distorted tales serve to remind us of some unassailable historical facts. Catriona does have some gift – it’s not for truth-telling, or soothsaying, but she sees very clearly the past of her community, and her country, and its people.

The American disappoints her, inevitably. He fades from history, as Catriona emerges stronger, more able to acknowledge reality. At least, that’s what we hope for her.

Ends November 21 2021. Box Office 0207 498 4699, https://www.omnibus-clapham.org