Dear Liar ★★★★

Dear Liar, by Jerome Kilty, starts with a hatbox full of letters. But this is no ordinary hatbox, and these are no ordinary letters.

The hatbox in question belongs to celebrated English stage actress Mrs Patrick Campbell (Rachel Pickup), also known as ‘Mrs Pat’, and was smuggled out of Paris in 1940, shortly after her death and just before the German occupation. Inside lies four decades of correspondence between her and playwright George Bernard Shaw (Alan Turkington), charting their professional collaboration (he wrote the part of Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion for her), the evolution of their relationship and the major events in their lives, all captured in exchanges that are witty, sharp and often unexpectedly tender.

Playing in what must be the West End’s most intimate venue, the scene is thus set for a deeply personal encounter with two key theatrical figures: one still widely recognised today, the other unjustly forgotten, having failed to transition to the big screen.

Their relationship began around 1899 when Shaw first saw Campbell (born Beatrice Rose Stella Tanner) on stage. He wrote to her. She replied. They met. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Both were already married, yet they formed an immediate and intense bond. Even after she was widowed, the relationship didn’t become physical as she insisted that she wanted to “behave like a gentleman” while Shaw was married. He never left his wife, so what developed instead was a deeply felt emotional connection, sustained largely at a distance. He called her Stella; she called him Joey (a teasing nod to the clownishness she saw in him), and their correspondence continued until her death in 1940.

Over that time, their letters captured everything from their initial infatuation to their deepening affection, from mutual support through periods of distancing to her eventual remarriage. They also recorded their two major rifts: the first over her desire to publish the letters to raise money and the second over his less than flattering caricature of her in The Millionairess. And how they re-established contact after a seven-year silence, returning to their correspondence as they realised their feelings for each other were undiminished, and making peace through their letters before she died.

Covering forty years, across a reputed 400 letters, in just two hours is no mean feat. But Kilty solves this by having the actors narrate, in brief, what has happened between the on-stage exchanges. This device keeps the pace brisk and the narrative clear, although it does raise the awkward question of how faithfully the letters themselves are represented and whether these, too, have been shaped for theatrical convenience. A minor quibble, but one which colours the rest of the play.

Then there’s the challenge of representing forty years on a stage barely larger than a family living room (and which the audience must cross to reach ‘the facilities’).

Set and costume designer Tom Paris meets this challenge with a smartly restrained colour palette, Edwardian-inspired costumes given a contemporary twist (such as Shaw’s suit paired with a long-sleeved T-shirt), and “soft” scenery in the form of beautifully illustrated cloth backdrops that glide in and out to suggest place… all supported by a few well-chosen props.

Lighting designer Chris McDonnell continues this resourceful approach, keeping it simple for the most part, focusing firmly on the two leads, even when Shaw ventures into the audience. His highlight, however, comes when Shaw appears behind a translucent seascape with Mrs Pat standing before it, the lighting subtly emphasising both the physical and emotional distance between them as she withdraws from him near the end of rehearsals for Pygmalion.

A similar approach from Harry Blake’s sound design, which gently underscores the action, most notably through the rhythmic clatter of typing. His main triumph, though, is after the play has finished, through the choice of “On The Street Where You Live” from My Fair Lady to play the audience out.

Artistic director Stella Powell-Jones pulls these staging elements together into an assured and entertaining production. It moves with confidence, handles the passage of time without fuss, maintains coherence across all the elements and makes great use of the small space. The only slight misstep was the rather abrupt ending, which leaves a faint sense of something unfulfilled. Perhaps that’s the point!

But what of our two protagonists?

Alan Turkington (Antony and Cleopatra at the NT; Michael Grandage’s Hamlet) is an absolute powerhouse as Bernard Shaw. His physicality signals Shaw’s mood long before he speaks, and there’s plenty of mood to go around as he shifts from adoration through neediness to frustration, exasperation, anger, and then back to tenderness again. Turkington’s intonation brings the words to life beautifully and shines a light on Shaw’s self-centred attitude and beautifully acerbic wit. At times, though, the sheer force of his performance feels almost too big for the tiny venue, although the privilege of seeing it at such close quarters more than compensates. It’s as close to an acting masterclass as a paying audience is likely to get!

Rachel Pickup (Merchant of Venice at The Globe, multiple RSC productions) offers a more restrained take on Mrs Pat, at times bordering on prim. It’s hard to know whether this is a deliberate choice to reflect the social constraints placed on women of the period (starting before emancipation, when respectability and self-containment were expected and appearing on the stage was still considered mildly scandalous) or simply a more pared-back acting style that inevitably feels muted beside Turkington’s energy. She doesn’t always convince in the moments of romantic warmth, but her attempts to master Eliza Doolittle’s cockney accent during the Pygmalion rehearsal scenes (where Shaw is striving for the opposite outcome to Henry Higgins) are laugh-out-loud funny.

Both are enthralling to watch, and their diction is glorious, but their on-stage chemistry never quite captures the passion expressed in the words they speak, despite her many attempts at a loving gaze. That niggle aside, they bring their characters to life with such conviction that it’s easy to see how these two people were drawn to one another so strongly.