Review: I Pie With My Little Lie Something Beginning with Murder, Hen and Chickens Theatre

I Pie With My Little Lie, Something Beginning with Murder is another show from Unrestricted View’s Hatchery programme, which helps develop shows from short monologues into full Camden Fringe productions. And it’s another absolute winner alongside If Not Me. The Hatchery proves how great writing, with the right nurturing and support, can be turned into a piece of simply glorious theatre. Anyone who has ever been to the Hen and Chickens Theatre will likely recognise writer and performer Mark Lyminster as the warmly welcoming face often at the box office, and so it’s fabulous to see him take his cheerful persona and turn it into such delightfully silly characters. 

I Pie (I think we can safely shorten that title now!) begins quaintly enough. Lyminster’s waiter quietly gossips about the restaurant where he works, discussing both its owners and customers. He is charmingly camp, with more than a hint of Larry Grayson in his delivery, and full of groan-inducing innuendos that Grayson would have been proud of. There is a skill in delivering such terrible innuendo without it becoming painful, and Lyminster clearly has that skill set, both as writer and performer. Even at its most broad, it is laugh-out-loud hilarious. His confession that he has tried the owner’s sausage surprise once or twice and it is rather thick and filling is both awful and brilliant at the same time. 

The waiter is, at least so we are led to believe, simply a clever framing device to introduce the ragtag collection of customers that come in to eat. We hear about their outward appearance from the waiter, each sounding like the sort of people you’d expect in a quiet little village where nothing much happens. Yet as Lyminster embodies each, we soon realise that things are just a little darker than those outward impressions suggest. Because each has a murderous tale to tell, and each even has a subtle pie reference to bind them all together. None would feel out of place as characters in the League of Gentlemen (the BBC comedy, not the dodgy Hollywood film). 

It’s a complete surprise to discover this is Lyminster’s writing debut, apparently convinced to give it a try by director James Wren while setting up their Hatchery programme. Maybe less surprising is knowing that, as part of that programme, the show has developed from a series of short monologues. It’s easy to imagine each individual character starting as a short in their own right. Yet that doesn’t mean they have all been thrown randomly together; rather, they have been carefully prepared, each an ingredient that together create something rather tasty, with the waiter as the pastry holding it all together. Perhaps this framing could be slightly firmer, with the closing twist not as clearly delivered as the rest of the show deserves. But that can easily be worked upon as it develops further.

I Pie is one of those surprising little gems that crop up within Camden Fringe, easily missed with its 3 pm slot. But an absolute treat for those who spot it. It is perhaps the most I have groaned at a show for a long time, but in a wonderfully “did he really just say” way! It may be Lyminster’s first foray into writing, but you do hope it won’t be his last.

Written by Mark Lyminster
Directed by James Wren
Produced by Hatchery and Unrestricted View

This show has completed its run at Hen and Chickens Theatre as part of Camden Fringe.