The Liar’s On Fire

The roar of the audience dulled to a hush as the pastel-colored lighting revealed the intricate scenery of 18th century Paris. The Liar, this fall’s mainstage production, showed on Friday, Nov. 3, Saturday, Nov. 4, and Sunday, Nov. 5.

The Liar, as summarized by lights and sound production designer Luke Ahlemann, is a play following “a pathological liar [named Dorante], who’s a nobleman. He comes to France, and he befriends a ballet dancer, Clarice, who can only tell the truth.” Upper Miranda Derossi, who portrayed Lucrece, the female lead’s best friend, in the play, explained the rest of the play: “And so he tries to court her, thinking her name is Lucrece. Then, the wrong girl ends up falling in love with him.” At the end of the tale, the web of lies Dorante has spun all comes crashing down, the audience rooting for each character up until the final scene.

For the past ten weeks, the cast and crew met for at least two hours a day in preparation for the show. Derossi provided insight about how the play progressed from script to stage. “We started out with tablework. So we just took our scripts to a table, and we just read through the scenes and talked about each character’s motivation in the scene, and how that sort of informs the way we say the lines, and how we move and all that,” Derossi said.

The crew then transitioned to blocking. “And from there, we just reviewed scene by scene until we put it all together and started running act by act, then just did full run-throughs, then dress rehearsal, and finally tech weekend.” Derossi concluded. According to many of the actors, there were a quite a few bumps along the road to the final dress rehearsal. “It was also a rough process when we were doing rehearsals…When we did our dress rehearsal, three out of four of the guys split their pants onstage,” Upper Gillian Allou explained.

Despite the setbacks in the dress rehearsal, the actors described each performance as successful in its own right, crediting their success to the audience’s excitement, which inspired the cast to immerse themselves in the work even more. “The audience was really good. They had a lot of energy, which was really nice and really helped,” Derossi said.

One of the many reasons the show went so well was because of the friendly and inclusive atmosphere among the eight cast members. Actor and senior Anzi DeBenedetto thoroughly enjoyed his experience in The Liar, explaining that his favorite part of being in the play was developing close bonds with his peers. “I’ve really enjoyed the cast this term,” he said. “It’s a small cast with just 8 people, so we’ve been really close-knit, and we work together pretty well. There’s a lot of good banter, and it’s a good time working with these people.” Senior Cody Nunn echoed DeBenedetto’s sentiments, saying, “A lot of people think it is stressful, but I think it’s fun because I’m friends with a lot of people in the cast. I get two hours towards the end of the day to have fun.”

However, acting in the play had its challenges. The actors struggled to figure out how to keep the comedy alive, after reviewing each scene time after time. Allou noted this complication, but went on to commend The Liar for its consistent undercurrent of humor. “After a bit, you get used to the script, so some things aren’t as funny,” she said. “But each week you pick up some new thing to latch onto, something else that you find funny, and you try to communicate that to the audience.”

The cast’s efforts to make every part of the show amusing definitely paid off. “The actors all...had fun discovering the layers of comedy in the show,” upper and stage manager Anna Clark said. Ahlemann agreed, adding, “I really appreciate with how they started to play around with the fantastic language in the play.”

The process of designing the sets, costumes and lighting came together seamlessly, according to Technical Director and Set Designer Cary Wendell. Throughout the past term, Wendell, Ahlemann, and director Sarah Ream and a group of others worked separately to create an ambiance in which the actors and viewers feel as though they’ve been transported to Dorante’s world. Wendell described their course of action, explaining that all the designers “gravitated toward almost identical color schemes.” Wendell took pride in the fact that once he saw the play, he nearly forgot that it wasn’t designed by one person. Ahlemann further lauded the play as a finished product, gushing about “how bright the whole thing was.” He elaborated, saying, “Our director kept saying how the whole play has to be a souffle. There are scenes at night, and normally at nighttime, the lighting is darker and it’s harder to see people, but this play embodies how nighttime looks like when everyone is still visible in that scene.”

Audience members easily recognized the sheer amount of effort put into the play. For lower Paula Perez-Glassner, the elements of the show that stood out to her were the detailed settings and costumes. “I loved all of the costumes. I thought that was a really interesting part of the show, to look at all of the detail that went into them,” she said. Perez-Glassner was also interested in how the same props were used to build different sets, including the bedroom, the garden, and “outside.” The comedy was another part of the play Perez-Glassner was interested in. “I think that the fact that the show is a comedy in rhyme makes it different to other comedies,” she said.

For many audience members, the  highlight of the show the play’s wittiness, and the genuine devotion that each cast member had to their role. What Wendell most enjoyed was “[the cast’s] relationship, the way they interact physically.” He continued, saying, “ I loved the nuances of their expressions, and their gestures. Their slapstick stuff, their comical fight choreography. All of that stuff. It’s fun to watch them having fun.”