In 2019, playwright Jerry Slaff was working for the federal government and was “really disgusted with all the lying.” Slaff began musing about the greatest liars of the 20th century, and his research led him to Mildred Gillars, an American woman working in wartime Germany as a radio personality, delivering Nazi propaganda over the airwaves to English-speaking troops. “The German version of Tokyo Rose,” (says director Michael Gros), Gillars was referred to (along with others in her position) as Axis Sally or Berlin Betty. Eventually, Gillars was convicted of treason and placed in a U.S. penitentiary. “In 1950,” says Slaff, “she would have been up for her first attempt at parole.”
This is the scenario that inspired Lies, Slaff’s play about the prison interview-room conversations between Berlin Betty and her attorney leading up to her parole hearing. Gros, who will direct this play at Center Stage Theater, describes the piece as a pressure cooker. “It’s a very specific relationship between two characters: one who is not interested in leaving prison, [and] the other who is desperate to have a significant win for his career. From there, the play deepens and deepens.”
Produced in collaboration with DramaDogs, Leesa Beck will play the prisoner with Nik Valinsky as her ambitious young lawyer. The tension between the Jewish attorney and the Nazi sympathizer is heightened by the fact that the U.S. government holds a grudge. “The government wouldn’t want to let her out!” says Slaff. “Everything is still fresh. Elections are coming. The government wouldn’t want to be seen letting out traitors.”
See Lies August 28 to September 6, with post-show talkbacks with the playwright on the August 28 and 30.
“The play has something to say about our world today,” says Gros. “It gives you both moral and intellectual challenges — and a pretty good night in the theater!”
See dramadogs.org/performance/lies.
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