This play, by a deeply moved Chris Dunkley, was an unsophisticated look at the evils of conflict and is reflected in its title “How to Tell the Truth”. The time is the autumn of 1991 and the action takes place in a village near Osijek, Croatia. Intermittent machine gun fire is heard outside the room that is trying to be a cafe. A journalist is awaited who will bring a painting which will be exchanged for an interview and hopefully be the start of making the room into an art gallery. Sounds simple, but the characters are all screwed up by the conflict going on outside. Truth is at a premium as it may mean the end of your life. Lu Kemp directs a plot that must have seemed like ideas all going in different directions in search of a solution.
Milos, played by Damien Goodwin, is all mixed up to the point of sadistic aggression which he inflicts on everyone he meets. Shota, played by Helen Coker, tries to look for the better things that may one day come her way, runs the cafe. The interaction between these two is anything but loving in the conventional sense. Milos’s brother Marko, played by Philip Ralph, sees things as a child, which is his protection from the conflict, until he tries to act as a man. The journalist, played by D. Lydon, arrives normal and is subjected to this sadistic environment which she has no answer to and is not what she expected. Throw into this two bleeding carcasses of pigs and you get a pretty mixed up state of affairs.
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