False Friends Pack of Lies

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Friendship can be a true kinship, an intimacy that lasts a lifetime. But some people who think of each other as close friends are merely companions of convenience, their bond formed through proximity at the office or in neighborly chats along the back fence. They may not understand each other, may not even like each other much, but somehow they see each other all the time. That kind of attachment has grown up between the Jacksons, a shy, stiff couple who live with their adolescent daughter in the built-up London suburb of Ruislip, and their Canadian-born neighbors, the sunny, boisterous, intrusive Krogers. The families pop into each other's houses, exchange presents, share holidays. So long as they accept each other at face value, the relationship works. But when they stop to examine what they really know about each other, they uneasily sense that their affection could be based on what Playwright Hugh Whitemore calls a Pack of Lies.

The process of disillusionment starts melodramatically. A chilly, officious "civil servant" (Patrick McGoohan) arrives at the Jacksons' home and bullies them into permitting his unnamed, hush-hush government agency to install surveillance agents in the upstairs front bedroom. The targets of this scrutiny turn out to be the Krogers: they have fabricated their personal histories, and are suspected to be part of a Soviet spy ring. But Pack of Lies, a West End hit now on Broadway, is only secondarily about espionage. As in his play and film Stevie, a small masterpiece that starred Glenda Jackson, Whitemore is more interested in private drama: the anguish of having to uproot one's bedrock beliefs about people, the calamity that results when global politics intrude on quiet lives.

The Jacksons are unsettled by the neighbors' treason, but for the lonely, timid wife Barbara (Rosemary Harris) the personal betrayal cuts far more deeply. She has almost no friends other than Helen Kroger (Dana Ivey), and cannot bear the thought that Helen has lied to her and feigned devotion. In torment, Barbara rages at the snoopers: Spying on spies, she rants, is the moral equivalent of spying. She aches with desire to tell Helen to flee. Her pain is more than loyalty: it is a burning need to legitimize her own feelings.

The interplay between the two women is the play's mainspring. Ivey bubbles with crude gaiety in her effort to be liked. Harris finds pathetic dignity in an emotional loss that makes her physically ill. The supporting cast is also adept, notably George N. Martin as Harris' stolid, stubborn husband; only McGoohan's automaton-like condescension seems unreal. Director Clifford Williams has sensitively evoked the rhythms of the play, which alternates between naturalistic bursts of action and spotlighted soliloquies. Much of the story is told after the fact, in an elegiac, ruminative tone, reminiscent of $ recent work by Tom Stoppard and Simon Gray. The epilogue leaves open the central question: When intimacy based on false assumptions still feels genuine, what does friendship mean?