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The Land That Never Was

The Studio, Edinburgh

Three stars

 

Wanna' buy a bridge? Maybe later, but before we begin, a history lesson. Between 1820 and 1837, a Scottish soldier called Gregor MacGregor fairly successfully attempted to get hundreds of believers to invest in a country in Central America he claimed to rule called Poyais. When those who bought into MacGregor’s promised land sailed out to embrace their new homestead, alas, they found only uninhabitable jungle. Or so we’re led to believe. 

 

Such a back story is about as true to life as it gets in Liam Rees’s solo show, in which he explores our willingness to suspend disbelief and put our faith in pretty much anything a smart talking huckster like MacGregor can offload, however non-existent it might be. Rees does this in an affable mix of pop history lecture and shaggy dog stand-up routine, in which he double bluffs the audience with geeky charm, only to bamboozle them with what may or may not be details of his own personal history. He then undercuts all this by ‘fessing up it was actually all a big fat lie with a lid on. 

 

Rees’s early adventures in embellishing the truth came while working as an Edinburgh tour guide, where he left the tourists with a story they could dine out on, however ridiculous his yarns were once broken down. Out of this comes a comic meditation on truth, lies and the need to believe in something, however transparent the patter, however fake the news and however oily the sales man promising you the world but leaving you with nothing. 

 

Developed from a scratch night, and with early support from Capital Theatres, Summerhall, Vanishing Point Theatre Company and the National Theatre of Scotland, Rees’s own production makes for an engaging hour. As he feeds lines to several members of the audience, they go willingly to join in with his conspiracy, while assorted epithets projected onto the back wall seem to be the only thing being upfront honest. For a while, however, just like Gregor MacGregor, Rees really does seem to rule the roost in a show and tell that suggests that, if you go along with whatever line he’s spinning, chances are you’ll believe anything. 


The Herald, March 17th 2025

 

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