TOP Cat Productions will stage Godfrey Naughton’s play `Living the Lie’ at the National Cultural Centre from April 3-5, with the promise of the unexpected.
The play is based on an illicit love affair between a successful older women and an unlikely younger man.
The woman, Mrs. Langston, is a married lawyer caught in a web of pent-up desire, and a need to lash out at the objects in her life that causes her pain - her crippled husband.
The wife is played by former best actress, Jennifer Thomas, and the husband, Godfrey Naughton.
Mrs. Langston is unable to deal with the pressures of caring for her husband, providing for the family, the trauma of losing a son in the accident that crippled the husband and up-keeping their practice. Mr. Langston is a lawyer also.
Unaware of her vulnerabilities, she has a chance sexual encounter with her employee, played by Sheldon Brathwaite. She seems to be in love with this boy who is young enough to be her son. She tries to adopt here young lover’s son, played by Riccy and Roddy Holder, and shows the child favour over her own daughter played by Mekeisha Naughton.
Put a suicidal husband and a narrow-minded gangster played by Robert Hoban into the mix, and we are in for considerable entertainment.
Elder Barbara, played by veteran Mignon Lowe, is the sole stable character who is unaffected by Mrs. Langston’s infidelity, and is single-minded when it comes to solutions to the plight of the home. The elder takes care of the family’s domestic needs.
The play is a poignant drama at times, and at the other times, gut-busting. The audience is guaranteed to not know whether to laugh or cry at its end.
“Theatre of the unexpected is back,” said Naughton, who is also the play’s director.