New Forest Players bring Hugh Whitemore’s Pack of Lies to Ballard Performing Arts Centre
INTRIGUE and espionage will combine as New Forest Players perform Pack of Lies by Hugh Whitemore.
Since joining the New Forest Players in 2021, the show’s director, Lyn Lockyer, has produced two highly successful productions, Calendar Girls and Art.
She is now bringing the popular 1983 thriller Pack of Lies to the Performing Arts Centre at Ballard School.
Set in the winter of 1959 in Ruislip, the play is inspired by factual Cold War events, though it is the bland ordinariness of suburban London which is a counterpoint to the high drama of an international spy ring.
The plot centres on Bob and Barbara Jackson, a nice middle-aged English couple. Their best friends are Canadian neighbours Peter and Helen Kroger. All is blissful in their world until a detective from Scotland Yard asks to use their house as an observation station to try to foil a Soviet spy ring in the area.
The Jacksons become more and more put out as Scotland Yard’s demands on them increase. In the nightmare months that follow, the Jacksons’ comfortable life is shattered as the truth slowly begins to dawn on them.
They are really put to the test when the detective reveals that the spies are the Krogers and he asks them to help set a trap. Should they betray their friends?
The cast includes Paul Berry as Bob, Judy Anders as Barbara, Maddie Beard as Julie, Dawn Cresswell as Helen, and David Luker as Peter.
The New Forest Players can trace their origins back to two local amateur groups founded in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In 1946 the groups merged, becoming known as the New Forest Players in 1948.
Throughout the Second World War the determined thespians still performed, epitomising the theatrical maxim that the show must go on.
New Forest Players will perform Pack of Lies at Ballard Performing Arts Centre in New Milton between Wednesday 9th and Saturday 12th August at 7.30pm. Tickets are £14 to book visit: www.newforestplayers.com or call the box office on 01425 542414.
